Review: The Girl Who Named Pluto

Reviewed by Susan Kay Phillips

In this book, The Girl Who Named Pluto: The Story of Venetia Burney, written by Alice B. McGinty and illustrated by Elizabeth Haidle, the wonder and awe we feel gazing up at the night sky is reflected through the eyes of a young school girl living in Oxford, England. 

The year is 1930. Eleven-year-old Venetia Burney is afire with the joy of learning, learning about astronomy, learning about math, learning about Greek and Roman mythology.

At her school, her gifted teacher, Miss Claxton, has promised an adventure, a planet walk. To begin, Miss Claxton draws a huge glowing Sun on the blackboard. Then she leads the class outside, walking down the sidewalk, carefully counting paces. Thirty-nine, forty, forty-one, she counts. At forty-one, Miss Claxton stops and places a tiny seed on the pavement to represent the planet Mercury. The class marches on. At seventy-seven paces, Miss Claxton places a small pea for Venus. On they go. Next, Earth is placed, a slightly larger pea. Then Mars, then an orange for the giant planet Jupiter and then a golf ball for Saturn at 1019 paces from the Sun. The two other known planets, Uranus and Neptune, are too far to reach during the time they have for the planet walk. Miss Claxton urges the class to imagine the huge distances to the two outer planets. 

Venetia has already memorized the number of miles between the Sun to each of the planets. The distances are vast. She is filled with a sense of wonder thinking of the solar system.

The next morning at breakfast, her Grandfather Falconer Madan reads aloud an amazing announcement in the newspaper. A new planet far beyond Neptune has been discovered! The astronomers at the Lowell Observatory in the United States are searching for a name for the new planet, Planet X. 

Venetia’s mind whirls with excitement. What could the name of this new planet be? Venetia imagines this far distant planet, journeying around the Sun in the cold, distant reaches of space. She immediately thinks of the Roman underworld, a far, cold place ruled by the Roman god, Pluto, who can make himself invisible just as the Planet X has been unseen for so long. 

“The name could be Pluto,” she says to her grandfather.

Grandfather Madan loves her brilliant idea. That very day he writes a message to his friend, Herbert Hall Turner, at the British Royal Astronomical Society. “Blest if my little granddaughter, Venetia Burney, didn’t up and suggest a name which seems to me thoroughly suitable: PLUTO.” Professor Turner also loves the name. Immediately, he cables Venetia’s suggestion to astronomers at the Lowell Observatory in the United States who have the naming rights for the new planet.

Grandfather Madan and Venetia anxiously wait. Will the astronomers at the Lowell Observatory choose Venetia’s name for Planet X? Several months go by. Finally, a letter comes to Grandfather. The astronomers in the United States have voted unanimously in favor of Venetia’s suggestion! The new planet will be known as PLUTO. Venetia becomes the only child to ever name a planet.

Author McGinty skillfully inserts interesting historical details into Venetia’s story, always keeping the focus on Venetia’s imagination and fascination with learning. Elizabeth Haidle’s illustrations done in ink and graphite powder capture the subdued feel of British winter while highlighting Venetia in a maroon coat, suggesting her fiery enthusiasm.

The text segues gently from the thrilling news that Venetia’s name has been chosen for Pluto into a portrayal of her ongoing life ending with a beautiful highlight on the day before her 89th birthday. Venetia has been invited to the Observatory Science Centre in southern England. There for the first time, she gazes through the observatory telescope and sees her distant friend, Pluto, shining back to her from the far, cold, outer reaches of the solar system.

Reviewer’s Note

Venetia Burney (1918-2009) was born into a very learned family. Her grandfather, Falconer Madan, had been the librarian of the Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford. Her great uncle, Henry Madan, Science Master of Eton, had named the two moons orbiting the planet Mars, using the names of Mars’s twin sons, Phobos and Deimos. Truly, the whole family was afire with the love of learning and passed this on to Venetia.

Venetia’s grandfather understood very well the significance of the contribution that Venetia had made by naming Pluto. He kept a scrapbook with clippings from newspapers and magazines which mentioned her role in the naming of the new planet. He also very wisely recognized the brilliance of her teacher, Miss Claxton, and sent a generous gift to her, which she used to purchase a gramophone for the school. The gramophone was promptly named Pluto by Venetia’s classmates.

Venetia grew up to become a chartered accountant and later a math and economics teacher at a girls’ schools in London. She married Maxwell Phair, a classicist, who shared Venetia’s enthusiasm for Greek and Roman mythology. 

In a 2020 charming interview with writer Cherry Gilchrist, Venetia states that the name Pluto came “right off the top of my head” after her Grandfather mused about what the name of Planet X would be. Venetia goes on to humbly state that she felt “…very, very lucky. Being in the right place at the right time was what it came to”. https://cherrycache.org/2020/10/18/venetia-the-woman-who-named-pluto/

Venetia lived to be ninety years old, dying in 2009 in Surrey, England.

PLANET WALK

Consider going on an adventure as Venetia’s class did by constructing your own planet walk. Below are some suggestions for creating a thousand-yard Sun to Pluto a planet walk. When creating a planet walk, there are two factors. One is the relative size of the Sun to the various planets. The other is the relative distances between the planets and the Sun.

There are instructions available on the internet for creating planet walks of various lengths. However, working on the scale of a thousand foot solar system, also known as “the earth as a pepper-corn” model, it becomes possible to represent the Sun as a eight-inch diameter ball and have the planets be large enough to be visible objects. Information on creating your own thousand foot planet walk are found at: https://lavinia.as.arizona.edu/~dmccarthy/GSUSA/activities/Additional%20Files/Thousand%20Yard%20SS%20Earth%20is%20Peppercorn.pdf

PLANET TREK

If you happen to live in the Madison, Wisconsin area, you can go on the Planet Trek, utilizing the city’s Southwest bicycle path. The Planet Trek was constructed in 2009 by the University of Wisconsin Space Place to celebrate the International Year of Astronomy. It begins at the Monona Terrace Convention Center on the edge of lake Monona where the Sun is represented by a sphere twenty-four feet in diameter. Traveling west on the Southwest Path, you will find markers for six planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Each marker gives information about its planet and shows the relative size of the planet scaled to the twenty-four foot diameter Sun.

To continue on to Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, you must switch to the Military Ridge Path. If you complete the entire Planet Trek, you will arrive in the village of Mt. Horeb, WI, and find the marker for dear Pluto, twenty-three miles from the Sun at Monona Terrace. Pluto’s Planet Trek marker is pictured below.

See more information on Planet Trek at https://spaceplace.astro.wisc.edu/exhibits/planet-trek/