Counting By 7s

What a tumultuous Smackdown year, so many ties and so many broken dreams.  I'm not going to lie; "Eleanor and Park" and "Wonder" were my personal Smackdown favorites.  But due to the fact that neither crawled their way to the finale, I'll have to go with "Counting By 7s".  I seem to be all about first person perspective this ear.  All three of these novels had some pretty incredible main characters, whose voices were engaging and original.  Willow is an interesting kid, if you can all her that.  She seems to have more maturity than I or any person I know.  Maybe it's the fact that I love the Big Bang Theory and I imagine Sheldon and Willow understanding each other at a deep intellectual level, but she's the most endearing character from the final book contenders.  In modern society there doesn't seem to be many nuclear families left.  Even the family Willow came from wasn't, she being adopted.  So I think it's an important book to see that these people chose each other, each person bringing some crazy quality that seems to fit in their jigsaw of a family.  Another reason for my vote being thrown to "Counting by 7s" is the fact that it seems to fly through my grade 7 girls’ hands.  And for me that's what Smackdown is about: finding books that make it to my shelf but never stay there because students keep recommending the book to their peers.  "Counting by 7s" did just that.  It may not be the book I wish had won, but we don't always get what we want.

Tristin