This first picture book by novelist Prendergast (Pandas on the East Side, 2016, etc.) explains the relative sizes of the planets in our solar system.
Two children camp out in a backyard, a black child with cornrows and afro puffs and a white child with freckles and glasses. Armed with a book about the solar system, they explore Pluto’s status as a dwarf planet by using the refrain “if Pluto was a pea” as a point of comparison. Each spread compares a pea-sized Pluto to another object in the solar system. “The sun would be a tent”; “Mercury would be a marble”; etc. The final comparison is to smaller objects—Pluto’s three moons. On each spread, the newly named object appears, sometimes with the last object or a pea in the picture too. In the digital illustrations, the background alternates among the night sky, the inside of the tent, and simple white space; the last unfortunately detracts from the cohesive feeling of the story as a cozy campout. An effort is made to keep the objects in proper proportion; this is not always the case though, and the inconsistency can cause confusion. Both metric and English measurements are given for each item for the mathematically minded; as the text is stolidly repetitive, it’s hard to imagine other sorts of readers for it.
A good idea with execution that leaves much to be desired.
(Informational picture book. 4-8)