Counting By 7s

Counting By 7s

YA fiction
"Next of kin.
That's what they want to know. Kinfolk. Who talks like that?
But that's what they are asking me."
Holly Goldberg Sloan's Counting By 7s is another of those older
books I only just got around to reading it even though people have
been recommending it for ages. I wasn't expecting much. I never
expected it to grab my heart. So I had to review it right away
instead of relegating it to my back up notebooks created earlier in
the pandemic when I chose binge reading over binge viewing, day
drinking, or building Tobago an authentic medieval castle cat house
she probably would totally ignore.
Willow is a twelve-year-old highly gifted student who hates
school. She studies her middle school classmates like an ethnologist
(one who studies people and their relationships) rather than bonding
with them. She has major obsessions concerning the number human
medical conditions, and plants.
One day she comes home to finds police car parked in front of
her house. Both of her parents were killed in a car accident. Her
only known relative resides in a home for dementia patients. Her
parents hadn't cultivated a network friends. So social services sets
in motion the process of getting her into a group home. At her age
adoption and the stability it would offer are highly unlikely.
But there are is a very unique band of beings that comes behind
getting her a better option:
*Dell: the burnt out guidance counselor Willow starts seeing when her
school falsely accuses her of cheating on a test
*Pattie, a Vietnamese single parent who runs a nail salon
*Mai and Quang-Ha, her teen children
*Jairo, a taxi driver with college aspirations
*Cheddar, a portly ginger cat
They don't know the ropes. They don't have the clout of the system.
But they have determination and the ability to think outside the box
on their side.
If you're anything like me you'll be caught up in the narrative,
really caring about the outcome.
On a purrrsonal note, being neurodivergent myself, one of the things
I really appreciated about the book was how it didn't draw a clear
line between "normal" and "abnormal" characters. All are portrayed as
deeply human with quirks and strengths.
When I saw a counselor for six months in 2021 I learned that I have
anxiety. I don't mean in the popular jargon sense, but the clinical
sense. It's something that will probably be a part of me for the rest
of my life. Just like petit mal epilepsy. I didn't want the taking
pills for the rest of my life. So I worked with my counselor on
developing strategies for short circuiting it. I'm also dropping
situations that are predictably anxiety provoking. I now volunteer at
blood drives instead of donating because I'd get really anxious about
building my iron up enough weeks before I donated. A funny thing
happened when I started coming out about my anxiety. A lot of people,
including people who seem to have it all together, said "me
too." (Jules)
Do cats get anxiety? I get very anxious when my daddy hooman goes out
in the big snowstorms. (Tobago)
A great big shout out and a message to hang in there goes out to
people with anxiety, depression, and all the other diagnoses that are
on the rise in 21st century America.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway



Sent from my iPod