The Seventh Most Important Thing
Shelley Pearsall
Honestly, once you read the back of the book, you are hooked. On a bitter November day in Washington, D.C., when everything felt metallic- when the sky was gray and the wind stung and the dry leaves were making death-rattle sounds in the alleys- thirteen-year-old Arthur Owens picked up a brick from the corner of a crumbling building and threw it at an old man’s head.
That is the very first paragraph of the book. Like, wow.
So, after meeting Mrs. Pearsall at my library in the summer of 2015 and talking to her, I made a silent vow to read every one of her books. All of the Above and All Shook Up were just fantastic. (Dudes, she’s got a husband with the thickest British accent I have ever heard. I literally walked up to him and said some stammering sentence about how great his accent was.) The Seventh Most Important Thing was coming out when I met her, and I just now (2016) was finally able to read it. I grabbed the book of the shelf, made a weird sparrow-war-cry-shrieking-fangirl noise and checked it out, gobbling it up.
Arthur Owens is a seventh grader who lives in Washington, D.C. He is dealing with the recent death of his father, the people who said his father earned his death of wrecking from drinking so much, his mother juggling waitress jobs, and just life itself. His reason for throwing the brick was a pretty good one- but of course the judge, a man described as “loving the sound of his own voice way too much”, didn’t believe Arthur. Arthur gets to spend forever in juvie, or he can work for the man he threw the brick at, Mr. James Hampton- the Junk Man.
Arthur is abandoned by all his friends, and has to spend every weekend picking through people’s trash finding the Seven Most Important things- and close enough isn’t good enough.
Arthur soon begins to see what importance each one of those items has in his life, and learn more about himself. Then disaster strikes. Finally having to go into the garage where all the stuff he has been collecting his kept- he stumbles upon Mr. Hampton lying on the ground, and something that is so stunningly spectacular it can be described as nothing less than the throne of heaven.
You’ll have to read the rest for yourself.
The Seventh Most Important Thing is literally one of my new favorite books. I would buy it in a heartbeat. The beginning is amazing, and the ending is beautiful and wrapped up well. The book is one of realizations and really makes you think.
I loved how Shelley crafted the entire story. From the characters to the setting- everything is important whether you think so or not. There were so many times I instantly disliked a character, and thought they were there for a second, and they ened up being through the rest of the book and I began to like them. It is never dull, and she grabs the emotions perfectly.
The book is written in 3rd limited and, of course, is from the view of Arthur Owens. It is set the week after JFK’s assassination (whenever that was…), though his death doesn’t really have anything to do with anything in the story. The story itself is only 273 pages, but is just great.
I would recommend this story to anyone, and I mean anyone. It’s clean, it’s deep, it’s good, and it’s pretty short. This could be read by anyone between eleven and as old as people read. Really guys, check it out.
Bye!
