Pluto, who is white, loves astronomy, missed the last month of seventh grade due to major depression and anxiety. This summer she’s under constant supervision as she’s towed to and from her mom’s pizzeria. Her dad wants her to move in with him in New York City, but Pluto just wants everything to go back to normal. She has a checklist of tasks that, if completed, will prove she can be her old self again: attend her best friend’s birthday party, start therapy, meet with a tutor, and visit the planetarium for her birthday. She befriends and then starts crushing on Fallon, also white, whose own summer goals include cutting her hair and convincing her mom to let her wear a suit, rather than a dress, to her brother’s wedding. But Pluto’s road to recovery is anything but straight. She’s frustrated and angry and doesn’t feel like herself. And her mom, who is trying so hard, doesn’t always get things right. Notably, Pluto experiences no sudden or magical cure in this heartrending story; rather, she realizes she must learn how to manage and cope with her mental illness, while her mother and friends begin to learn how best to support her. (Ages 9-12)

For Pluto, summer has always started with a trip to the planetarium. It’s the launch to her favorite season, which also includes visits to the boardwalk arcade, working in her mom’s pizzeria, and her best friend Meredith’s birthday party. But this summer, none of that feels possible.
 
A month before the end of the school year, Pluto’s frightened mom broke down Pluto’s bedroom door. What came next were doctor’s appointments, a diagnosis of depression, and a big black hole that still sits on Pluto’s chest, making it too hard to do anything.
 
Pluto can’t explain to her mom why she can’t do the things she used to love. And it isn’t until Pluto’s dad threatens to make her move with him to the city—where he believes his money, in particular, could help—that Pluto becomes desperate enough to do whatever it takes to be the old Pluto again.
 
She develops a plan and a checklist: If she takes her medication, if she goes to the planetarium with her mom for her birthday, if she successfully finishes her summer school work with her tutor, if she goes to Meredith’s birthday party . . . if she does all the things that “normal” Pluto would do, she can stay with her mom in Jersey. But it takes a new therapist, a new tutor, and a new (and cute) friend with a checklist and plan of her own for Pluto to learn that there is no old and new Pluto. There’s just her.