Whither Pluto?

by Sue Corbett, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 3/15/2007

Not every poet monitors events at the annual convention of the International Astronomical Union as closely as Douglas Florian did last August, when the IAU was meeting in Prague. But he had reason to be on guard.

Florian had just finished his latest poetry collection, Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars (Harcourt, Apr.) when he picked up on rumblings of cosmic discord in the IAU, the scientific body that sets standards for the field. "The ironic thing was that the rumor was they were going to add planets," Florian said.

Instead, on Aug. 24, 2006, the IAU decided that Pluto, first discovered in 1930, was smaller than originally believed, and did not dominate its orbit. "Apparently," Florians said, "to qualify as a planet you must orbit the sun and have hydrostatic equilibrium, which is fancy astronomer talk meaning 'round,' and you must 'clear the neighborhood,' which means you don't interfere with anybody else's orbit. By those criteria, my cousin Barry sort of qualifies. He's quite round, orbits the sun and is always clearing the neighborhood."

Tiny Pluto, so beloved that Mickey Mouse gave his dog its name, had been demoted. "They voted it out. It was really controversial because apparently a lot of the astronomers had already left the convention when it happened," Florian said. "It was like a secret session of Congress."

An hour later, Florian got an e-mail from his editor, Andrea Welch, asking, "What are we going to do?" Florian quickly penned a new ode to the old rock:

Pluto was a planet.
But now it doesn't pass.
Pluto was a planet.
They say it's lacking mass.
Pluto was a planet.
Pluto was admired.
Pluto was a planet.
Til one day it got fired.

Florian also had to rewrite the Pluto entry in the book's "Galactic Glossary," and fix the double-page painting of the solar system, which depicted the sun in a lizard green sky, with nine planets rotating around it. Unceremoniously, Pluto was Photoshopped out.

"Electronically, they were able to take Pluto out in about two minutes," Florian said.