Middle Grade Sidekick Short Review: The Planet, the Portal, and a Pizza (2025) by Wendy Mass and Nora Raleigh Baskin

cover image of The Planet, the Portal, and a Pizza by Wendy Mass and Nora Raleigh Baskin, published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2025.

The Basics

Page Length: 260

Audiobook Length: ~5.5 hours

Grade Reading Level: 4+

Target Audience Age: 9+

Goodreads Score: 3.55 out of 5

Buy it HERE

Setting: Contemporary suburban town with switching to alternate universes

Genre: Middle Grade Science Fiction

Topics: Science, Invention, Robots, Portals, Multiverse, Friendship, Adventure

Plot: Twelve-year-old Piper and her robot dog, Roody, are on a mission to find her missing parents. Her worry grows when Roody shows her security footage of them moving in and out of a mysterious force field in their front yard. Then Piper discovers an unusual book filled with mathematical symbols that only she can see—and when she touches them, strange things happen. Suddenly, she finds herself transported to an alternate dimension, while her body remains frozen in the real world.

Meanwhile, in a different universe, Raisa and her best friend Lev are determined to prove her mother’s theory about multiverse travel. Years of work are on the line, and with funding and time running out, they decide to test the theory themselves—without permission. Their experiment takes them to the same universe as Piper, where they quickly realize that getting home will require a special book of mathematical symbols… a book they can’t seem to find.

It soon becomes clear that each girl holds a piece of the puzzle the other needs. Can Piper find her parents? Can Raisa and Lev return to their own universe? And can they put the pieces together before time runs out?

You might like this book if you like:

• Doing science experiments

• Video games/coding/game design

• Inventing

• Books like: A Wrinkle in Time, Gregor the Overlander, When You Reach Me

• Shows like: Rick and Morty, Phineas and Ferb, Gravity Falls, The Owl House, Amphibia, Ben 10

• Movies like: Meet the Robinsons, Back to the Future, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The Mitchells vs. the Machines

  
  

Other books written by this author:

Wendy Mass: A Mango-Shaped Space, 11 Birthdays, The Candymakers, Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life, Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall, Leap Day, Pi in the Sky

Nora Raleigh Baskin: Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story, Anything But Typical, Ruby on the Outside, The Summer Before Boys, What Every Girl (Except Me) Knows

Content

• Language: None

• Sex/Romance: None

• Violence/Scariness: This book has high stakes and suspense, but nothing truly scary. There is an explosion, and a time sensitive problem to solve.

• Drinking/Smoking/Drugs: None

  
  

Book Talk Read Aloud Section

*What is a book talk? (Watch a how to video here. Read my blog post here)

If you have the physical book, read pages 1-9. This is the whole first chapter. There's not a great place to split it, but if you are short on time read 1-5 (through the second paragraph, through "But every second she waited, another pack of Smarties wound up in some other kid's pocket.")

If you don't, read the same pages in the Kindle reading sample here.

Long: locations 295-336 (through "But every second she waited, another pack of Smarties wound up in some other kid's pocket.")

Short: locations 295-390