ARE YOU MY PLANET?

An extraterrestrial’s search for home turns into a tour of the planets.

In the patterned tradition of P.D. Eastman’s Are You My Mother? (sort of), green-skinned Beep zooms from planet to planet, but none turns out to be his own “small and red and beautiful” one. With time for just a name and a fact (“Neptune is the windiest planet”), each merits only a quick flyby, being too big or too hot or, anthropocentrically for Earth, “much too busy.” When at last small, red, beautiful Mars comes into view, Beep lands his saucer joyfully to find mate and child (or equivalents) waiting. Miller strews his cartoon spaceways with rockets, satellites, sparkly stars, and nonhuman passersby of diverse description. Only at Pluto, which Beep zooms by between Earth and Venus (it’s unclear how Houran has plotted Beep’s route) and which sports a “Not a Planet Anymore” sign, do the smiles that he puts on the faces of nearly every astronomical body briefly change to frowns: “Oh dear. Sorry about that. Good luck.” There is no explanation for Pluto’s demotion, not to mention any reference to the solar system’s eight other dwarf planets. Pluto does assume its proper station on the closing planetary panorama, but the hand-wavy approach to strict accuracy kicks Earth’s moon out to share an orbit with Mars. Fortunately there are enough similar but more detailed tours available that primary level readers inspired by Beep’s mini-odyssey to book a deeper interplanetary dive will be spoiled for choice. (This book was reviewed digitally with 8-by-14-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)

A tantalizing, if not dependably factual, first flight.