A thoughtful exploration about finding oneself, learning to hope after loss, and recognizing the role that family, friends, and even strangers can play in the healing process if you are open and willing to share your experience with others. It has been two years since his mom’s death, and Jamison, his dad, and his younger sister seem to be coping, but they’ve been dealing with their loss separately and in different ways. When Jamison almost forgets the date of his mother's birthday, he worries that his memory of her is slipping away. To help make sense of the passing of time, he picks up his camera—the Nikon his mother gave to him. Jamison begins to take photos of ordinary people on the street, at the same time and place each night. As he focuses his lens on the random people who cross his path, Jamison begins to see the world in a deeper way. His endeavor turns into a school project, and then into something more. Along with his new outlook, Jamison forges new and unexpected friendships at school. But more importantly, he’s able to revive the memory of his mother, and to connect with his father and younger sister once again. Gr 7 Up—Jamison is a photographer—he eats, sleeps, and breathes the images he captures. His ritual is to go to the same street corner at 9:09 every night and snap whoever is walking by with his Nikon. The time is so specific because that's the time, two years ago, his mother passed away after a long battle with cancer. Jamison has a strong relationship with his younger sister, Ollie, who starts as a freshman in his high school. Her instant popularity helps open doors for Jamison's nonexistent social life, especially with his longtime crush, Kennedy, who takes advantage of his photography skills to put together her modeling portfolio. Kennedy's subsequent disinterest in him, combined with the negative attention he receives from his new classmate nicknamed AK-47, drives him to focus on creating a website to highlight his photos of what he calls "The 9:09 Project." Jamison's isolation and sadness from the loss of his mother will be instantly relatable to teens. The descriptions of Jamison's synesthesia and how he visually perceives numbers and concepts is a great introduction on how a large segment of the population perceives the world in a completely different way. Jamison talks about how he has adapted and learned to live his life with synesthesia; his mother shared his perceptual condition and could understand him in a way that he feels other members of his family can't. VERDICT An engaging, thought-provoking title that is easy to read, hard to put down, and will have readers wondering about the characters long after they've finished it. A highly recommended purchase.—Ryan P. Donovan ★ "A wryly funny, extremely intelligent , and sweetly romantic contemporary novel full of biting sarcasm and... tender yet powerful emotions." — Kirkus Review , starred review ★ “An engaging, thought-provoking title that is easy to read, hard to put down, and will have readers wondering about the characters long after they’ve finished it. . . . highly recommended.” — School Library Journal , starred review "A character-driven work that celebrates the healing power of connection and creativity , encouraging readers to take a closer look at the world around them." — Publishers Weekly “ The novel’s greatest strength is its characterization . The relatable characters come alive on the page, their portrayal being, yes, picture perfect.” — Booklist "A strikingly honest depiction of loss, grief and healing." — BookPage A Kirkus Reviews Best of 2022 Selection A Broadart Books Staff Teen Selection A Bank Street College of Education’s Children’s Book Committee’s The Best Children’s Books of the Year 2023 Selection Mark H. Parsons is a writer and musician living on the Central Coast of California with his wife (also a writer and musician). They have two sons with whom they occasionally make loud music under the name Risky Whippet. Mark enjoys the three "R's"—reading, running, and rock 'n' roll. CHAPTER 1 It is not enough to photograph the obviously picturesque. --Dorothea Lange   “Can stupidity make your head hurt?” Seth asked me. “Only other people’s heads,” I said. “Never the stupid guy’s.” He looked toward the other end of our table. “Well, that explains a lot.” We were in the cafeteria, eating lunch while trying to ignore Beal Wilson and his buds and their rating game. Those geniuses had started a ten-point system at the beginning of the school year. Who knows why . . . maybe they saw it in a movie and missed the entire point? Now, a week in, they’d finalized it. According to them, any girl under a five was so far below grade she wasn’t even worthy of notice or discussion. (As a corollary to this, by doctrine they’d hook up with anyone five or above. So really, it was a binary go/no-go system, not a ten-pointer. But it was useless trying to tell them this. Trust me--besides being sexist asshats