Everyone knows entering a storybook planet will receive a message telling you find it. But how many people know there may be no message? When you arrive a storybook planet of known type, you will not be notified again. That is, if you cannot identify it by your eyes, you may miss it. Furthermore, although you know it is a storybook planet, you may have nothing to prove which type it is.
My Craters planet. It has no visible crater.
For knowing if it is a storybook planet, badge "Wonderland Wanderer" level 4 or lower is proper. When you have a new storybook planet, the count will +1 instantly. Click it in Collection window to show it on top-left of the screen. It is useful to detect some strange types, such as craters (may be no crater on it). Nevertheless, it has only 12 bullets which can't be reloaded.
If you have other saved planets which hasn't get Wonderland Wanderer level 2 yet, you can use it as a detector and identifier. It means that you have to sacrifice the chance earning the badge in one of your saved files. Move the spacecraft to a planet to examine, and DO NOT SAVE.
Wonderland Wanderer level 1 means you have found only one and one type of storybook planets. If next planet is detected and no new type added into Collection, you know that is the old type. Of course, empty Wonderland Wanderer is also usable.
If the game tells us the type directly and shows message even a known type, we don't need to trouble ourselves. Spore is gorgeous, but not perfect and awfully bugged. As players, we can only find a way to use efficiently what we have.