I loved In the Role of Brie Hutchens…, so when I was invited to take part in a blog tour for Melleby’s new middle grade book, it was a no-brainer. And I was right, and got exactly as soft & thoughtful book as I was expecting. So yeah, big thanks to Algonquin Young Readers for allowing me to shout about this lovely novel!
Apart from a review, I also prepared a music mix you can listen to while reading the book.
Also don’t forget to follow Nicole Melleby on twitter!
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.
How to Become a Planet
Nicole Melleby
Rep: sapphic mc with depression and anxiety, nonbinary li, side sapphic couple
CWs: panic attacks
Release: 25th May 2021
How to Become a Planet is not an easy book to read, in a way that it’s a book about a depressed teenager. It hurts to read, especially if it resonates with your own lived experiences. At the same time, because the writing is so good, it flows easily and makes you want to finish the whole thing in one sitting. A book of contradictions.
As always with Melleby’s books, there is more than one obstacle for the main character to deal with, but all of it ties together nicely. Pluto has depression, yes, but she also has panic attacks quite regularly; she has to make up a big portion of her school year she messed up because of her mental illnesses; she has parents who aren’t a couple anymore and both want the best for her, but just end up pulling her in different directions; she has friendships breaking apart…
All of this just works to make the book more real and relatable. It never feels like piling more & more problems on Pluto’s shoulders for the sake of creating some kind of tragedy porn. On the contrary, for every little thing that’s broken (or in the process of breaking) in Pluto’s life, there’s either something good happening or someone introducing a solution for Pluto to try. She has an amazing support system, and that might be the most important & groundbreaking part of How to Become a Planet.
Those were all choices on the author’s part, and they feel very deliberate. Even the title itself. Pluto, as her name demands, is obsessed with astronomy. There’s a whole plotline where she calls the Hayden Planetarium Astronomy Question and Answer Hotline numerous times, but each time she asks a super specific question. Sometimes they’re strictly astronomy related, but sometimes they’re more about Pluto and her life, as if the Hotline was her safe haven, a Life Line almost.
How to Become a Planet is a very tender book. It’s shaped in a way to let LGBT youth know they will always have people fighting for them, there will always be hope & love. The book breaks your heart a little bit, but it also stitches it back together, just like Pluto stitches herself back together, with the help of all the people around her who care deeply about her happiness.
So, have I convinced you that you want to read this book?
