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Chapter 2
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Counting by 7s, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Independent Thinking
Bureaucracy
Grief and Survival
Chosen Family
Summary
Analysis
Willow always wears the same clothes to garden, including a red hat over her long curly hair to protect her from the sun. She doesn’t like being forced to go to school, but she does have one friend named Margaret Z. Buckle. Then one day, Margaret has to go to Canada for her mother’s job, and the two of them lose contact. Soon after, Willow starts at Sequoia Middle School.
Willow’s choice to always wear the same clothes for gardening shows another way that she has unusual opinions. Although Willow is often intelligent in ways that the rest of the world fails to see, her choice to always wear the same clothes suggests that, for all of Willow’s intelligence, she can get stuck in her comfort zone and afraid of change.
Active
Themes
Before starting at school, Willow needs a physical exam, and she’s excited to learn that she needs to wear glasses. She picks ones that look like Ghandi’s. She wants to wear her gardening outfit to school. Her mom and dad suggest other outfits, but Willow insists. The next day, she just happens to find a back-to-school issue of Teen Vogue on her bed that says, “DOES YOUR OUTFIT SAY WHAT YOU WANT IT TO?” Neither of her parents admits to putting it there.
