Did You Know?
Elizabeth Rusch came up with the idea for The Planet Hunter, found a publisher and wrote the first draft in about three months?
Elizabeth Rusch says: When an international group of astronomers bumped Pluto to dwarf-planet status, I knew that they completely changed the way we view the solar system — and made every single children’s book on the solar system out-of-date!
I was itching to write a book that would explain these changes for children. I banged out a short email to Theresa Howell of Rising Moon, the editor of my picture book A Day with No Crayons. “Have you been following the Pluto debate?” I wrote. “Would you be interested in a picture book on Michael Brown, the astronomer who, using an old telescope, found the object bigger than Pluto that brought the whole planet debate to a head? But we’d have to do it fast…”
I hit SEND and about a minute later the phone rang. It was Theresa saying she was interested and could I write up a proposal for an editorial meeting in a week. I did and got a contract giving me about a month to interview Mike Brown, write his story, and explain the science of the new solar system in 32 pages. It was fast, but fun!
Click on
Cool Stuff to find links to great websites like NASA and the Hubble Space Telescope.
More about The Planet Hunter: As a kid, Mike Brown gazed at his poster of the nine planets of the solar system and wondered: Is there more out there? Could he find another planet, a planet everyone else has missed? The hunt was on… Mike discovered some weird things out in space — icy Quaoar, far-out Sedna, and finally something bigger than Pluto!
The Planet Hunter explains why Pluto is no longer considered a planet — and why our solar system is more fascinating than we ever imagined.