This book is about a 12-year-old genius living in this regular old world. You instantly like her because her perspective is incredibly logical and strange. Because she sees the world this way, she absolutely doesn't care what anyone else thinks. This is the quality I like the best about her. But when a girl like this is confronted with tragedy and heartache, even she has to find a way to cope. What could be harder?
She finds herself surrounded by equally strange people who, though not geniuses, manage to match her in the strange and logical categories.
As I read the book, I couldn't help but go through the cast of 'Willow-like' characters that have paraded through my life. Kids who were on the 'fringe' of the norm. And I had to stop and think how I treated each and every one. To some I acted with indifference. To others I secretly felt pity**. Several of them I actually had a lot of curiosity about and wished I was the type of kid precocious enough to just go ask them (How did you know that calculus theorem before Mr. Crossfield showed it to us? Why do you walk so fast all the time?) Never, that I recall, did I treat any of them in a way that would be considered forcefully hurtful. But as I read the book, 'indifference' and 'pity' can be just as damaging.
“It's possible that all labels are curses. Unless they are on cleaning products.”
- Counting by 7s
As a mother, I think about how I will raise my son in such a way as to be kind and compassionate to all types of children he comes in contact with. It's hard. Kids are cruel. Image and acceptance become so vital as a kid tries to become their best self, that the road of least resistance is always to distance yourself from the kids that are different. I think being shy and having a natural tendency to feel bad for most kids when they deserved it, kept me in check naturally. Will my son do the same?
Moreover, I couldn't help but wonder - where are these kids now? This book is a great reminder that for most, including myself, middle school/high school is not the peak of life. And traditional ways of growing up don't always fit every type of child. I know some of the kids that fell in the 'genius' category when I was growing up are doing awesome and put pretty much everyone else in our graduating class to shame. Some of kids on the opposite end of genius, I'm not sure. But I hope they are doing equally outstanding in whatever life they have found themselves.
**The one kid that comes to my mind immediately in this category is Bruce. We were in the same class throughout elementary school. He was chubby and kind of smelled and had good days and bad days when it came to clean clothes. He got his name on the board daily and spent a lot of his free time in the principal's office. But Bruce wasn't mean. He was just put in the role of outcast and all the popular kids hated being coupled with him for anything. As for me, I didn't want to sit by the smelly kid. But he made me sad. And he was always nice to me. Thus, when the weeks came that desks needed to be rearranged and we got to fill in a slip of paper with the names of the three people we wanted to sit with (we typically sat in quads of 4), I always put the names of my two closest friends in the class, and at least once a year, I put Bruce's name in the #3 spot. It's funny. I remember the names of a select few good friends I had in elementary school, but I remember Bruce very clearly.
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