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How to Become a Planet

By: Nicole Melleby
Narrated by: Rachel Jacobs
Length: 6 hours 52 minutes

Bookseller pick

“When Pluto is diagnosed with depression and anxiety she feels like a completely different person; unable to complete simple tasks such as getting out of bed, unable to relate to her friends, unable to finish 7th grade. Pluto has a deep love of anything space related and frames her world and her experiences using space analogies. Why was Pluto a planet then suddenly not a planet anymore? Why does it feel like a black hole is consuming her world? This book is about friendship, persistence, and how mental illnesses affect families, but most importantly how it is okay to be different and okay to be unable to do some things. How to Become a Planet pulled at my heartstrings. This book is heavy at times, but I wish there had been a book like this when I was younger explaining depression and anxiety in an accessible way—letting me know I wasn’t alone in feeling a bit different. Definitely a must-listen for all.”
Emma, Content

Bookseller pick

“I loved this book—simultaneously a true to life depiction of mental illness in middle school and a fun read full of self-discovery, a summer working at the family pizza restaurant, and a deep love of space!”
Miriasha, Phoenix Books

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.