In Neil deGrasse Tyson’s book The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet, he takes his experience as an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History and records through hate mail from third graders, comic strips and famous debates and articles Pluto’s history.
How can you forget Pluto? It’s the furthest away and the smallest. And it has the same name as Mickey Mouse’s dog.

In 2000, the author Tyson was involved in the planning of the new Rose Center for Earth and Space. After much discussion about Pluto, they decided to side-step the issue by not talking about the nine planets as a whole and instead grouped items with other like items. The gas giants together, the terrestrial planets together, and then Pluto together with members of the Kuiper belt. But soon after opening day, although the media was not discussing it yet, it took one small child to see right away that Pluto was missing from their Scales of the Universe display. All the other planets were there. Where was Pluto? The media storm that follows is what this non-fiction work is all about.

Although his book contains a scientific component, it is as much about the pop-culture that surrounds the planet Pluto. I feel comfortable echoing the sentiments of reviewer Maria Duncan when she notes that the “book is engaging, written for a general audience, and brings up lots of great points: 1) We probably wouldn’t have had this kind of public reaction to Pluto’s reclassification if Pluto hadn’t been discovered by an American, 2) There actually isn’t an exact definition for what makes a planet a planet, and 3) Pluto does not care what we call it. It just goes on being Pluto”

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Some highlights from the book are:

“Monday, May 24, 1999. The night Pluto fell from grace.”

“Where does Pluto fit? The Kuiper belt. End of story.”

“Although we think it’s DOPEY that Pluto has been downgraded to a dwarf planet, which has made some people GRUMPY and others just SLEEPY, we are not BASHFUL in saying we would be HAPPY if Disney’s Pluto would join us as an 8th dwarf. We think this is just what the DOC ordered and is nothing to SNEEZE at.” -Disney Company of Burbank, California

I recommend this book if you are trying to read more non-fiction, are a Pluto lover, science-aficionado, or feel more authors should use words like “pedagogically.”