Hello friends! I hope you are doing well. Today I am sharing a Middle Grade book that I read recently. How to Become A Planet by Nicole Melleby was a beautiful and heartbreaking read that I will cherish forever. It talks about dealing with mental health, learning to be kind to ourselves and also adapting as things don’t work for us. Pluto loves space and the analogies in the book show how her experiences of becoming herself are related to Pluto becoming a planet. Take a look at the synopsis below and then read on for my thoughts (and some art!).
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.
Content Notes: Depictions of single parent, depression, OCD, anxiety, panic attacks, suicidal thoughts.
Thoughts on How to Become a Planet
Existential crises are hard to deal with, no matter how old we may be. How to Become A Planet is a look at the dissonance inside a young girl who is recently diagnosed with depression and anxiety. While why she has it is irrelevant, the focus is how to go forward. There are a lot of things that Pluto used to do in the summer and if she does them again, will she be the old Pluto again?
On lists
As a planner, when something goes wrong or I am overwhelmed, I turn to lists. Lists provide a sense of control that nothing else does and over time I have learned that they can be a boon or bane. They can put limits where there shouldn’t be any and give us a goal that we truly don’t want to work towards.
This journey of making a list, trying to fulfill it and then recognizing when that list is no longer needed is something that I connected with Pluto on. There are certain habits and hobbies that we love passionately and without them, we don’t feel like us. For Pluto, it was going to the planetarium, connecting with her mom over space and hanging out with her best friend. But as easy as it may sound when everything is going with the flow, once that cycle is disrupted, it becomes unavoidable to reevaluate if all those things still matter to the same extent. Towards the end of How to Become a Planet, Pluto and her mom have a heart-to-heart discussion about the list and that got me misty-eyed. We need such honest conversations in our lives and I am glad that Pluto got that.
On the evolution of friendships
Another fact of life is that friend circles change. Whether it is because we move or our interests do not match anyone, through the span of our lives, we meet many people. Some we stay in touch with forever and some come and go. Pluto was best friends with Meredith before the diagnosis. When sometimes we as adults don’t know how to deal with mental health issues, it is not surprising that kids don’t know what to do about them either. While Pluto shuts off and neither of the girls know how to be friends with each other again, this acknowledgement goes a long way in preserving their friendship. I liked how Meredith and Pluto’s other friends always asked Pluto to come wherever they were going. They didn’t put pressure and they gave her the space she needed. Not everything has to be said in words and the girls had an intuition that I loved reading about.
On single parent families
I grew up with a single mom and I really appreciated getting to know Pluto’s mom’s side of the story – how she came to have Pluto, her hopes and dreams. She is a young woman who is learning the ways of the world while navigating being a single parent. At one point in the story, Pluto visits her dad who lives in a different city and while she is there, she is able to forget everything that is happening. While being with her dad seems attractive, her mom is the one she needs to be with. This realization of hers reminded me of myself when I was her age and struggling with a similar situation. Experiencing something for a short time does not mean that it will always be that great.
These are lessons we all learn as we get older and I am glad that Pluto had an amazing support system around her and it makes sense that it took her sometime to understand that. Her tutor, therapist, old school friends, the staff at her mom’s pizzeria, and her new friend Fallon slowly find an important place in her heart, supporting her in their unique way.
I loved this book! The friendships and relationships, the commentary on identity and being comfortable with oneself were embedded nicely in the narrative and I was rooting for all my characters.
How to Become A Planet is now available in stores. Be sure to request it from your local library and support them.
Amazon Print
Amazon Kindle
This book is also available as an audiobook, narrated by Rachel Jacobs.
Are you going to pick up this book? Head to the book review index for more recommendations, or suggest me some MG books in the comments! 🙂
Many thanks to Algonquin Young Readers for the gifted digital copy of this book for an honest review.
Cover Photo by malith d karunarathne on Unsplash
Be First to Comment