This book is good for a primary age group. It tells the story of the 11-year-old girl that, through a combination of a love for astronomy and mythology, chose the name of what is now known as Pluto. It's a very good book to be aspirational for young scientists and tell a simple, true story.

I liked this book because it tells about the life of a girl who eventually named the planet pluto. The book starts out with the girl's class doing an activity where they are creating a model of the solar system by using a to scale system where they walk a certain distance apart and make markers about where planets are in relation to Earth and other planets. They walk outside the school and down the street to complete this activity. This would be a great activity to do with students before or after reading the book together. Eventually in the book, the main character named Venetia finds out that a new planet has been discovered and she has an idea that the name of the planet could be Pluto. She tells her grandfather about this idea and he submits the request of the name, and eventually the name Pluto is adopted for this planet. I like this book because it elicits student curiosity about other planets and perhaps how other science things got their names. ( )

The Girl Who Named Pluto by Alice B McGinty is a wonderful book about Venetia Burney's life. During her life, she was extremely interested in the plants, especially because when she was in grade school they were learning about the planets when the big historic event occurred: the scientists had discovered another planet that was beyond Neptune! Venetia sitting with her grandfather decided that she liked the name Pluto named after Neptune's brother in mythology. After lots of waiting and sending the name to lots of different people, the name Pluto was released. Since Venetia was in Europe and the observatory that had made the discovery was in the States, she waited until she "had silver hair" and got to see her planet, Pluto that she named through the telescope! I think that this book would be a great idea for a teacher to use for connections within subjects, potentially offering students to try to name their own planet! ( )

This lovely book explains how a little girl’s love of mythology and asking questions inspired her to suggest the perfect name for Pluto, and how family connections helped deliver her suggestion to the Royal Astronomical Society and ultimately Clyde Tombaugh. It is mostly based on true events and ends with the story of an elderly Venetia Burney Phair seeing Pluto through the eyepiece of a telescope for the first time. It’s a gentle story, told in present tense, the language enjoyable to read aloud. ( )

This book is really cool because it is talking about the solar system. At the beginning of the story they are putting the planets in perspective of how vast it would really be in space. This in itself could be a really cool idea for students to grasp the concept easier by scaling it down so they can actually put this together. Then the rest of the book they talk about the different planets and then planet x. I think the idea of the student naming the planet is really cool and encouraging for some other students. This could encourage students to really follow their passion and not to be afraid to share their ideas.