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The Pluto Project
Alan Green has perfected his cool façade. He intends to survive the indignities of eighth grade and his father’s remarriage with as little emotion as possible. But even cynics need entertainment.Alan organizes a spying game with his friends and a beautiful new student, Juliet.They eavesdrop under a bridge—and overhear sinister meetings between two mysterious men.Then the governor is assassinated. Has Alan accidentally discovered the culprits? Alan’s obsession with the game—and with Juliet—threatens his oldest friendships, but he’s determined to learn the truth.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
January 5, 2015
The Pluto Project suffers from poor advertising. It presents itself as a thriller, with ordinary middle school student Alan Green being the only person to stopping a dread conspiracy from striking the highest levels of government. It’s not. There is no conspiracy. It’s all a figment of Alan’s out of control imagination. And if you don’t understand that at the start, you will not enjoy this book.
Alan’s problems start when he and his friends are playing a game at a local culvert. Pretending to be spies, he and his friends pretend that the conversations of strangers above them are actually secret codes for nefarious deeds. One day, he interprets one of the conversations to be referring to the assassination of the governor. But when the governor is really assassinated, Alan starts thinking that a conspiracy might actually exist.
Alan allows the conspiracy to consume his life, as he collects evidence, some highly persuasive and some utterly tenuous, to prove the conspiracy’s existence. His relationships with his friends collapse. His relationship with his father, never good after the death of his mother in a car accident, crumbles into dust. The only person who takes him halfway seriously is Juliet, who he harbors strong feelings for. But even Juliet is starting to doubt him.
Ultimately, the Pluto Project is a book about meaning, which is rather paradoxical, considering how meaningless the overall plot is. Alan believes that everything around him has a hidden meaning. He possesses a unique talent for figuring out the meaning of poetry. But he is unable to perceive how his life is crashing down around him.
The Pluto Project is not the pinnacle of reading excellence. It’s frustrating to read all the way through and realize that none of it meant anything. But life, like this book, frequently is senseless with a meaning that evades us. I think that the Pluto Project has a great deal to teach us about our lives and the foundations we base them on, which are often more tenuous than we would like. But you might find yourself a trifle disappointed when you finish, both in this book, and in yourself as well.
Alan’s problems start when he and his friends are playing a game at a local culvert. Pretending to be spies, he and his friends pretend that the conversations of strangers above them are actually secret codes for nefarious deeds. One day, he interprets one of the conversations to be referring to the assassination of the governor. But when the governor is really assassinated, Alan starts thinking that a conspiracy might actually exist.
Alan allows the conspiracy to consume his life, as he collects evidence, some highly persuasive and some utterly tenuous, to prove the conspiracy’s existence. His relationships with his friends collapse. His relationship with his father, never good after the death of his mother in a car accident, crumbles into dust. The only person who takes him halfway seriously is Juliet, who he harbors strong feelings for. But even Juliet is starting to doubt him.
Ultimately, the Pluto Project is a book about meaning, which is rather paradoxical, considering how meaningless the overall plot is. Alan believes that everything around him has a hidden meaning. He possesses a unique talent for figuring out the meaning of poetry. But he is unable to perceive how his life is crashing down around him.
The Pluto Project is not the pinnacle of reading excellence. It’s frustrating to read all the way through and realize that none of it meant anything. But life, like this book, frequently is senseless with a meaning that evades us. I think that the Pluto Project has a great deal to teach us about our lives and the foundations we base them on, which are often more tenuous than we would like. But you might find yourself a trifle disappointed when you finish, both in this book, and in yourself as well.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 2, 2020
Kind of a weird conclusion. The main problem, a gang was trying to assassinate political representatives in the US, turns out to be non existent. It is a mental game created by Alan, the protagonist, and it wraps up the story leaving a bad taste in my mouth. There was an opportunity with this plot line to create a fascinating story about heroism, and saving the governor, but the fact that it ended as being confirmed as make believe made me wish I had not picked up this book in the fist place. I liked it until the last 3/4, but after that it tailed off considerably.
It jumped back and forth, making me confused on the objective. Any foreshadowing seemed to not accurately portray the real plot.
If you are a frequent reader, it may be in your best interest to not read this book. There is much better ones out there on basically every shelf.
2/5 for the ending totally voiding the entire story line.
It jumped back and forth, making me confused on the objective. Any foreshadowing seemed to not accurately portray the real plot.
If you are a frequent reader, it may be in your best interest to not read this book. There is much better ones out there on basically every shelf.
2/5 for the ending totally voiding the entire story line.
May 9, 2022
Spy Games Jr.
This was a hard read for me. Alan was such a jerk to his friends that I don't know how he's kept them for so long. When he starts talking with the new girl, and eventually has a crush on her, he shuts out his other friends by being an even bigger jerk. He acts more like a brooding 16 year old rather than a 13 year old. All the kids acted more mature than 8th graders - and not in a good or realistic way.
When the funny eavesdropping 'spy' game that he and his friends play becomes a little more real for Alan, he starts getting a bit more frantic in his overanalyzing of every tiny clue convincing himself that someone is going to attack the new governor recently appointed because the last one was assassinated.
I was so frustrated with Alan that I couldn't get very invested in his antics - but I think that's how his friends felt as well.
This was a hard read for me. Alan was such a jerk to his friends that I don't know how he's kept them for so long. When he starts talking with the new girl, and eventually has a crush on her, he shuts out his other friends by being an even bigger jerk. He acts more like a brooding 16 year old rather than a 13 year old. All the kids acted more mature than 8th graders - and not in a good or realistic way.
When the funny eavesdropping 'spy' game that he and his friends play becomes a little more real for Alan, he starts getting a bit more frantic in his overanalyzing of every tiny clue convincing himself that someone is going to attack the new governor recently appointed because the last one was assassinated.
I was so frustrated with Alan that I couldn't get very invested in his antics - but I think that's how his friends felt as well.
December 14, 2016
Kong Yang
December 10, 2016
PAP English 10
1. Author’s Background
The author of The Pluto Project is Melissa Glenn Haber. Melissa Haber is a children’s fiction author. Melissa grew up in a like the one described in The Pluto Project. This is probably what inspired her to write about The Pluto Project. This is because Melissa herself probably had to come up with little games and such to keep herself entertained like Alan and his friends in the suburbs.
2. Literary Time Period
The Pluto Project was written in 2006. This novel can sort of relate to the film The Da Vinci Code because they both involve secret messages and decoding the messages to find its true meaning.
3. Setting
This novel takes place in a small suburb in Massachusetts.
4. Characters
Alan- Alan is a kid who grew up with everything handed to him. This causes him to only think about himself and this causes him to lose all of his friends at one point in this book.
Juliet- Juliet is the new kid at school who Alan thinks is the most beautiful girl in the world. Juliet is said to be tall and is always practicing ballet. She becomes close friends with Alan and is always patient with him when he is angry at her.
Trish- Trish is Alan’s aunt who has come to live with him and his father after Alan’s mother had passed away. Trish was going to move out soon but Alan begs that she stays longer because he doesn’t want to be left with his dad's girlfriend.
5. Theme
A theme of this novel is that you shouldn’t be so caught up in things that you forget about everyone and everything else. At the beginning The Pluto Project Alan starts off with a small group of very close friends. But, he starts losing them one by one as he gets caught up in believing that their spy game is real because he believes they predicted the murder of the governor.
6. Plot Summary
Alan and his group of friends live in a suburb in Massachusetts. To pass time Alan and his friends like to hide in a culvert and listen in on the conversations of people walking above. One day they overhear two people talking and Alice jokingly says that they were speaking in code. That they were conspirators and assassins. After this, the group of friends start a game in which they are spies who are spying on bad guys. This was just all fun and game until Alan and his friends predict the assassination of their govner. Or so Alan thought. Alan begins getting caught up in the spy game believing that it’s real. In the process he also gets Juliet, the new girl at school who Alan has a major crush on, involved. She plays the spy game with Alan as if she was also an agent, but she doesn’t take the game as serious as Alan. As the game continues and Alan and Juliet become close, Alan begins losing his other friends such as Agnes, Alice, and the rest of the group. He eventually loses Juliet when he confesses his feelings for her, but she didn’t want to be anything more than friends. Alan goes into a state of being alone and not caring about anybody else. But, he continues spying on conversation at the culvert and finds secret messages predicting the assassination of the new governor. It wasn’t really anything to him until their was a failed assassination on the governor. This makes Alan believe that the game is even more real. He continues spying and finds out that the assassins will attempt another assassination on the governor. Alan tries telling his old friends, but they all ignore him. He goes back to Juliet one day and she listens to him. One day, on the day in which the assassination was supposed to happen, Alan and Juliet go to the culvert in attempt to record a conversation between the two supposed assassins. On the way they met bullies from school fighting kid from school and Alan decides to defend the kid, but this results in his ribs being broken and him being in the hospital. Turns out there was no assassination that day and the governor was fine. After this Alan let go of the spying game. He went on to apologize to his friends that he had forgotten about.
7. Literary Devices
Foreshadow- The event of Alan apologizing to his friends and wanting to get back together with them was foreshadowed because when he was alone, he was constantly thinking about them. This foreshadowed that he may later apologize to them which he did.
Flashback- Flashback is used when Alan thought back to how him and his friends would sit around their table at lunch.
8. Memorable Quotes
Quote- “It’s pretty strange, isn’t it? I mean, it’s pretty amazing that we were expecting something like this.”
Speaker-Alan
Situation- Alan believes that him and his friends had predicted the assassination of their govner. He is telling his friend Agnes about how they were on to something with their spy game, but Agnes doesn’t buy it.
Quote- “It explains why you don’t have any direction. You’re like… you’re like a veal calf-or a stuffed goose. You’ve been given everything you could possibly want even before you want it, and it makes you soft.”
Speaker- Juliet
Situation- Alan had taken Juliet to his house and there she found out that Alan’s family was rich. Juliet then told Alan that this was the reason he acted the way he did about everything.
Quote- “Hey, Alice, listen- I know there’s no reason you should forgive me or anything, and maybe you won’t… I was just crazy and I don’t even know what I’m saying now except I want to say sorry and I don’t know how.
Speaker- Alan
Situation- After all the mayhem that had occurred, Alan decided that he was acting like a jerk to his friends and went to apologize.
December 10, 2016
PAP English 10
1. Author’s Background
The author of The Pluto Project is Melissa Glenn Haber. Melissa Haber is a children’s fiction author. Melissa grew up in a like the one described in The Pluto Project. This is probably what inspired her to write about The Pluto Project. This is because Melissa herself probably had to come up with little games and such to keep herself entertained like Alan and his friends in the suburbs.
2. Literary Time Period
The Pluto Project was written in 2006. This novel can sort of relate to the film The Da Vinci Code because they both involve secret messages and decoding the messages to find its true meaning.
3. Setting
This novel takes place in a small suburb in Massachusetts.
4. Characters
Alan- Alan is a kid who grew up with everything handed to him. This causes him to only think about himself and this causes him to lose all of his friends at one point in this book.
Juliet- Juliet is the new kid at school who Alan thinks is the most beautiful girl in the world. Juliet is said to be tall and is always practicing ballet. She becomes close friends with Alan and is always patient with him when he is angry at her.
Trish- Trish is Alan’s aunt who has come to live with him and his father after Alan’s mother had passed away. Trish was going to move out soon but Alan begs that she stays longer because he doesn’t want to be left with his dad's girlfriend.
5. Theme
A theme of this novel is that you shouldn’t be so caught up in things that you forget about everyone and everything else. At the beginning The Pluto Project Alan starts off with a small group of very close friends. But, he starts losing them one by one as he gets caught up in believing that their spy game is real because he believes they predicted the murder of the governor.
6. Plot Summary
Alan and his group of friends live in a suburb in Massachusetts. To pass time Alan and his friends like to hide in a culvert and listen in on the conversations of people walking above. One day they overhear two people talking and Alice jokingly says that they were speaking in code. That they were conspirators and assassins. After this, the group of friends start a game in which they are spies who are spying on bad guys. This was just all fun and game until Alan and his friends predict the assassination of their govner. Or so Alan thought. Alan begins getting caught up in the spy game believing that it’s real. In the process he also gets Juliet, the new girl at school who Alan has a major crush on, involved. She plays the spy game with Alan as if she was also an agent, but she doesn’t take the game as serious as Alan. As the game continues and Alan and Juliet become close, Alan begins losing his other friends such as Agnes, Alice, and the rest of the group. He eventually loses Juliet when he confesses his feelings for her, but she didn’t want to be anything more than friends. Alan goes into a state of being alone and not caring about anybody else. But, he continues spying on conversation at the culvert and finds secret messages predicting the assassination of the new governor. It wasn’t really anything to him until their was a failed assassination on the governor. This makes Alan believe that the game is even more real. He continues spying and finds out that the assassins will attempt another assassination on the governor. Alan tries telling his old friends, but they all ignore him. He goes back to Juliet one day and she listens to him. One day, on the day in which the assassination was supposed to happen, Alan and Juliet go to the culvert in attempt to record a conversation between the two supposed assassins. On the way they met bullies from school fighting kid from school and Alan decides to defend the kid, but this results in his ribs being broken and him being in the hospital. Turns out there was no assassination that day and the governor was fine. After this Alan let go of the spying game. He went on to apologize to his friends that he had forgotten about.
7. Literary Devices
Foreshadow- The event of Alan apologizing to his friends and wanting to get back together with them was foreshadowed because when he was alone, he was constantly thinking about them. This foreshadowed that he may later apologize to them which he did.
Flashback- Flashback is used when Alan thought back to how him and his friends would sit around their table at lunch.
8. Memorable Quotes
Quote- “It’s pretty strange, isn’t it? I mean, it’s pretty amazing that we were expecting something like this.”
Speaker-Alan
Situation- Alan believes that him and his friends had predicted the assassination of their govner. He is telling his friend Agnes about how they were on to something with their spy game, but Agnes doesn’t buy it.
Quote- “It explains why you don’t have any direction. You’re like… you’re like a veal calf-or a stuffed goose. You’ve been given everything you could possibly want even before you want it, and it makes you soft.”
Speaker- Juliet
Situation- Alan had taken Juliet to his house and there she found out that Alan’s family was rich. Juliet then told Alan that this was the reason he acted the way he did about everything.
Quote- “Hey, Alice, listen- I know there’s no reason you should forgive me or anything, and maybe you won’t… I was just crazy and I don’t even know what I’m saying now except I want to say sorry and I don’t know how.
Speaker- Alan
Situation- After all the mayhem that had occurred, Alan decided that he was acting like a jerk to his friends and went to apologize.
July 8, 2019
if this book used the word “intimacy” or “husky/huskily” one more time. i swear.
this is not a thriller. this is a book about a melodramatic teenager who gets all sad because his crush and friends reject him. he’s judgmental, he sucks, i don’t like him. the dialogue is terrible. so unrealistic.
please don’t read this if you’re looking for a YA thriller. there’s not much to say. this book is bad.
this is not a thriller. this is a book about a melodramatic teenager who gets all sad because his crush and friends reject him. he’s judgmental, he sucks, i don’t like him. the dialogue is terrible. so unrealistic.
please don’t read this if you’re looking for a YA thriller. there’s not much to say. this book is bad.
September 23, 2015
In the Pluto Project by Melissa Glenn Haber there is one main character with many supporting characters. The main character in this book is Alan Green, a kid with a rich dad and a mom that just recently passed away. The writer makes him believable because after his mother dies, his father gets a girlfriend only two months after. He responds to this like any stupid teenager would do, lash out with hatred towards his father and his girlfriend Cheryl. While the author does make the main character believable, it doesn’t matter because as the books goes on I realized what a juice box he was. He starts off the book with an unstable, but okay relationship with his dad, a group of friends that he has known since elementary school, and good grades through all his classes. At the beginning of the year he sees this new girl in school that he falls head over heels for instantly. That is about as good as his life gets. As it goes on you see how he gets invested more and more into this spy game that him and his friends made up just to pass the time. He connects the dots that he observed while spying and believes he has discovered a conspiracy to eliminate the government. His friend try to tell him that it is just a game, but he doesn’t listen. He just gets more and more invested in the conspiracy and the new girl that he saw at the beginning of the year. He begins to get tunnel vision on those and only those aspects of his life. At the end of this book my jaw was on the floor. That might be good in some cases, but in this instance I was in complete shock at how poorly the author ended the story so abruptly, so terribly, and so stupidly. My mind could not and would not accept that this was the actual ending. It was such a poor excuse of an ending that it made me angry for wasting my time on this book.
May 29, 2010
Well developed characters, excellent pacing, and the most absurd plot I've seen in a while for a "realistic" book. Although billed as a spy-game gone wrong, the book quickly becomes less about spies and more about one boy's decent into a mental breakdown with severe OCD symptoms (which no one in the book seems to recognize). Alan, the main character, lost his mother two years ago. This loss seems to have created a wall around Alan in which he becomes aloof but also slightly stunted developmentally. An extremely smart boy, he seems stuck playing games of make-believe while his friends begin to mature and move on to other teenage interests. This game playing causes Alan to believe that he's uncovered a plot to assassinate the Governor and later her replacement. Fueling his need to validate "The Game" as he calls it (and later "The Pluto Project" -- although a little too late to justify the title of the story) is his father's remarriage and Alan's resentment toward both his soon-to-be stepmother and father. This resentment plus the alienation of his friends seems to push Alan toward a mental breakdown, which coincides with the breakdown of the story. The spy game takes a backseat to Alan's personal problems, which though compelling and well written do not match the first part of the book. Is this an author writing for a younger reader's view on teenagers or is it a plot that's stampeding away from its creator? Readers 12-14 may get more out of story than adults.
January 28, 2009
Alan and his friends have played this stupid spy game for years, where they sit in a culvert under a bridge and pretend they are decoding the secret language of passersby.
But this time after they return home one day after an afternoon of satisfying spying, they find that the governor has been assassinated, and their suspects’ conversation from the bridge fits perfectly.
Alan’s only problem is that since he’s recently dumped all his friends for a girl, noone will back him up when he knows the new governor is next. Something is definitely up on that bridge (or under it) and one way or another everything will change because of what Alan thinks he knows.
So this one wasn’t what I first thought it would be but it turned out to be a very decent middle schooly/early high schooly type unrequited love interest type book, with some halfway interesting made up spy stuff thrown in, but also includes the divorce/new stepmom stuff. All in all - not enough spying - too much love. Maybe a 7/10?
But this time after they return home one day after an afternoon of satisfying spying, they find that the governor has been assassinated, and their suspects’ conversation from the bridge fits perfectly.
Alan’s only problem is that since he’s recently dumped all his friends for a girl, noone will back him up when he knows the new governor is next. Something is definitely up on that bridge (or under it) and one way or another everything will change because of what Alan thinks he knows.
So this one wasn’t what I first thought it would be but it turned out to be a very decent middle schooly/early high schooly type unrequited love interest type book, with some halfway interesting made up spy stuff thrown in, but also includes the divorce/new stepmom stuff. All in all - not enough spying - too much love. Maybe a 7/10?
December 8, 2007
This is a book that's supposedly about a boy who starts taking the spy games he plays with his friends seriously, but really, it's about a kid dealing with his mother's death and his father's remarriage. The second part was enough to keep me reading, the spy plot was perhaps not as developed as it should have been, the ball got dropped on the ending a little.
January 23, 2011
Spy games are for kids. Alan and his gang know this, but their game is looking like a real consipiracy. Romance is not part of the game, until Alan meets Juliet. Are there plans for an assassination? Will Alan get the girl?
March 31, 2014
Overall the book was very good. I read it in one day so that's saying something! It had a complicated plot to understand and a lot of characters.The ending wasn't the best but I'm not spoiling anything so you have to read it to find out!
March 15, 2009
Rather strange, but I remember feeling strongly about things in my youth that ended up not being very important.
July 31, 2009
Very interesting book. It pretty much kept me guessing right up to the end.
December 3, 2010
i think that at first this book was veery confusing but also good.
October 28, 2011
It was all right. It did not have very clean language, so I warn you thoroughly. I also warn you that this is told from a 14-year-old boys point of view. Read at your own risk.
July 27, 2013
Amazing book everybody should read it
February 6, 2015
I enjoyed this book quite a bit.
Read
September 19, 2017Is it a curse or a gift to find meaning in everything? A gift to see a message in the clouds; a curse to see fantastic meanings in the trivial.
The Pluto Project was written by Melissa Glenn Haber. It follows a boy who has a gift for deciphering clues from tissue paper. Conspiracies are everywhere if one would only look. To one Alan Green, this is a game of the highest order.
Go to continue: https://riddlesolved.wordpress.com/20...
Video on the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d67Qw...
The Pluto Project was written by Melissa Glenn Haber. It follows a boy who has a gift for deciphering clues from tissue paper. Conspiracies are everywhere if one would only look. To one Alan Green, this is a game of the highest order.
Go to continue: https://riddlesolved.wordpress.com/20...
Video on the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d67Qw...
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