Max Counts to a Million

Jeremy Williams's Max Counts to a Million is a funny, thoughtful story for 7 year olds about a boy who sets himself the biggest counting job imaginable.

What happens

Max tells you on the very first page that he did it. It's in the title, so it's a bit late for spoiler alerts! What he really wants to tell you is how it happened. And it happened in 2020.

It starts on an ordinary Tuesday. Mum gives him a side-hug at pick-up, which is how he knows something's wrong (mums always hug properly). Then Dad, a doctor at the hospital, comes home late and asks whether anyone at school has mentioned the coronavirus.

Max learns the word pandemic. He'd assumed it was a cooking game. The supermarket shelves go empty, classmates start vanishing from the register, and then the Prime Minister closes the schools.

Max himself is the joy of it. He goes off on tangents and then tells you he's gone off on a tangent. There's a whole chapter on the correct order for eating Smarties. He runs Team X for everyone with an X in their name, and he's pretty sure Team Z are up to something.

Underneath the jokes you can feel how much he's picking up. Every grown-up keeps saying the children mustn't worry, and he'd quite like to know how that's supposed to work. It's something we've probably all felt as kids, when the adults go quiet and you just know something's going on.

This is a lockdown book through and through, which is worth knowing. Dad is sent onto the hospital wards, Max can't visit his grandparents, and as the story goes on his grandad catches the virus. For a child who found that time frightening, it may bring things back. For others it could be a lovely way into talking about it together.

It also shows how small things can matter. Counting is how Max copes with missing his dad, and bit by bit the people around him join in.

What to read next

If they're after another lockdown story with a very chatty narrator, try Some Sunny Day by Adam Baron. Cymbeline Igloo is stuck at home missing his best friends, and his mum is so keen on social distancing that she makes them climb a tree to dodge the joggers.