Counting by 7s

Willow Chance is twelve, a genius, a person of color, obsessed with medical conditions and plants, and finds comfort in counting by 7s. She has never fit in easily anywhere except with her adoptive parents — until they are both killed in a car accident and she is suddenly alone in a world that has no category for her. What follows is not a tragedy but something harder and more honest: Willow navigating grief, foster care, a new school, and the slow construction of a family made from the people who choose to show up for each other. Sloan's multicultural cast — a Vietnamese American family, a burned-out school counselor, a nail salon — refuses sentimentality in favor of something more specific and more true. The book's argument is that chosen family is built from attention and care rather than obligation, and that a child who sees the world differently is not a problem to be fixed but a person whose particular way of seeing might change everyone around her. New York Times bestseller. E.B. White Read-Aloud Honor Book.