rivka

At supper tonight, I was telling Michael about a new-to-us exhibit Alex and I wandered into at the Maryland Science Center: "Our Place in Space," which features an enormous spherical display screen which they use to display planetary images. (OMG that thing was so cool.)

Rivka: And we saw Saturn, and Pluto... Pluto is Alex's favorite planet. Right?
Alex: That's not a planet.
Michael and Rivka look at each other, shocked.
Rivka: Pluto isn't a planet?
Alex: Some people say it's a planet.
Rivka: But it isn't?
Alex: Some people say it is. Some people say it's a planet, and some people don't.
Rivka: Is Jupiter a planet?
Alex: Yes.
Rivka: Is Saturn a planet?
Alex: Yes.
Rivka: Is Neptune a planet?
Alex: Yes.
Rivka: Is Pluto a planet?
Alex: Some people say it's a planet, and some people don't.

We were completely dumbfounded until I remembered that a book we have out of the library, Planets Around the Sun, makes a brief reference to the Pluto controversy. Then we were only mostly dumbfounded. I can't believe that she retained that piece of information and pulled it into a completely different context.

Great. She's not even three years old yet, and we're going to have to be careful about taking her to cons, for fear that she'll get a beatdown from Athena Scalzi.

Edited to add: I checked Planets Around the Sun. It just says, "Some scientists think [Pluto] is too small to be a planet. But most people still call Pluto the ninth planet of our solar system." So what Alex said seems to have actually been her analysis, not a direct quote from the book. Whoa.