Product Description

A Coretta Scott King Honor Award author offers a fresh look at this pioneering American innovator

Shampoo from peanuts? Wallpaper from clay? Ink from sweet potatoes? Discover Carver’s imagination and inspiration in this one-of-a-kind biography.

With imagination and intellect, George Washington Carver (1864–1934) developed hundreds of unexpected products from everyday plants. This book reveals what an exceptionally uncommon man Carver was: trailblazing scholar, innovative scientist, pioneering conservationist, and impassioned educator.

This book follows his life from slave and orphan to his college days as the first African American to attend Iowa State College (where he later taught), and on to his life and work in the field of agriculture. Illustrated with historical artifacts and photographs, the book traces Carver’s life, discoveries, and legacy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #265314 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 40 pages

From Booklist
*Starred Review* In the latest standout biography by Coretta Scott King Honor author Bolden, the writer’s expressive powers marry to a truly fascinating subject, the slave-born black scientist whose affectionate nicknames included “the Wizard of the Goober and the Yam.” Bolden provides the requisite biographical details, including Carver’s early, tragic separation from his mother, but also traces themes of his career, drawing connections between his kind masters’ waste-not values and his future devotion to finding new uses for farm by-products. Offering sourced quotations throughout, Bolden covers subtleties that simpler treatments tend to bypass, such as Carver’s trepidation about leaving the mostly white Midwest to join Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute. Directly and indirectly, Bolden also addresses criticisms of Carver for his lack of political activism: the mild-mannered researcher, Bolden writes, “was his own unique self with much to offer from his insights . . . into nature’s ways and gifts.” Photos and reproductions, many of Carver’s own paintings, are exceptional, and their arrangement in the style of an old-fashioned album lends the book a suitable gravitas. A selected bibliography closes this absorbing look at a man whose celebration in a traveling exhibition, launching this month at Chicago’s Field Museum (a partner in this book’s publication), will draw extra attention to both the Peanut Man and this fine portrait. Grades 3-6. --Jennifer Mattson

About the Author
Tonya Bolden has written more than twenty books for children and adults. Her book Tell All the Children Our Story: Memories and Mementos of Being Young and Black in America was named a Best Book of the Year by School Library Journal. Her Wake Up Our Souls: A Celebration of Black American Artists received a starred review in Booklist magazine. Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl was named a YALSA Best Book for Young Adults, an ALSC 2006 Notable Children’s Book, a NAPPA Gold Award Winner, a CCBC Best Book of the Year, a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age, and a Coretta Scott King Honor Book. She lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

So much more than a Peanut Man
In New York City, the early months of the year are known for two things: Cheek chilling winds of a bitter nature, and assigned biographies of famous people. All around the city children and their parents scramble to find something ANYTHING on their assigned subjects. And in February's Black History Month some familiar names start to crop up. "Harriet Tubman. Do you have ANY Harriet Tubman books?" "Jackie Robinson. I'll take whatever you have." "I'm sorry, but do you have any books on," glances down at paper, "George Washington Carver?" It's funny, but a librarian can start to get a little picky about the biographies they're handing out after a while. We have a couple George Washington Carver books on our shelves. There's Aliki's A Weed Is a Flower and of course David Adler's A Picture Book of George Washington Carver. You'll find some books for older kids as well, but these are usually either too complex for the fourth graders who need them, or too dull. So imagine my delight when I heard that Tonya Bolden not only had a new biography coming out, but that it was also going to be on George Washington Carver! My personal philosophy when it comes to biographies is that you can never have too many on one subject or another, and to my mind no children's author has ever done this man justice. Now, with eye-popping visuals and a great deal of research, Bolden presents a man who accomplished much more than merely finding a use or two for the peanut.

Born during the Civil War, George was raised by a couple that had owned his mother before him. Quick to learn, if a bit sickly, George had an affinity for the natural world around him and was as interested in art as he was in working with plants. He got his schooling at the Neosho school and after a variety of jobs he attended college and became the first black professor at what is now Iowa State University. Booker T. Washington was quick to pick up on George's skills and convinced him to come to the Tuskegee Institute. There, Washington did everything he could to teach others about revering and respecting nature. He helped farmers learn how to yield better crops and make the most from their land. He found infinite uses for the peanut and the soybean. In 1943 he died, but his legacy of caring for the earth and its products lives on and is more important now than ever.

As I read through this book, it became pretty clear that I knew next to nothing about Carver aside from his peanut-related accomplishments. Right from the start Bolden sucks you into his strange and interesting story. Born during the Civil War, George and his mother were kidnapped by raiders when he was a baby. George was rescued. His mother was not and he never saw her again. I also didn't know that his notoriety as "the Peanut Man" was around even during his lifetime and that he had to fight against it, to some extent. I was particularly grateful for Bolden's Afterword too, which is not afraid to bring up criticisms of Washington that he was a "non-threatening Negro" because he did not openly protest segregation. I respect any children's book which isn't afraid to show a little of its subject matter's complexity. To me, this Afterword fits the bill.

If Tonya Bolden is known for anything, it may be for her remarkable ability to write visually stimulating, interesting biographies without a lot of photographic elements on hand. Her Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl was an excellent example of this. With Carver she has had a slightly easier time of it. Somehow she was able to find great photos of many of the important people in Carver's life as well as images of him as young as thirteen or so. The book is designed to resemble a photo album both in its paper and in the lovely little corners that look as if they are holding each photograph in place. I also found it interesting that Bolden would sometimes, perhaps with space in mind, put interesting tidbits in her photo captions and not the proper text. For example, George was raised by Susan and Moses Carver who were opposed to slavery. Says the caption next to their photographs, "Some suggest that George's mother was a mercy purchase, but it is unclear why she was not therefore immediately freed."

Sometimes it's a lot easier to write a biography about a firecracker. Writing one about a quiet man who enjoyed painting flowers is heads and tails more difficult, but no less important. In one section Bolden says, "If he had had the temperament of a Frederick Douglass or an Ida B. Wells, he might have packed away that microscope and raised rallies for equality of opportunity and against night riders and lynch mobs. Carver was no magician, no Douglass, no Wells. He was his own unique self with much to offer flowing from his innate and studied insights into nature's ways and gifts." As such, I've read few biographies of quiet scientific people that quite compare to Bolden's beautiful 41-page title. She shows how our contributions to the world hinge upon the gifts we choose to use.

George Washington Carver
Bolden, Tonya. George Washington Carver. Abrams Books for Young Readers. 2008.

This very handsomely designed book chronicles the life of an extraordinary man. His story unfolds in clear informative text and fascinating archival photographs and other visuals including Carver's own scientific drawings and artistic paintings. It documents his heroic persistence to obtain a college education in a country laced with racism and then describes his impressive career as a researcher and educator. Carver taught and modeled a "waste not, want no" philosophy, believed that "every human need could be met by things that grow" and when he could no longer teach funded the creation of a foundation that would benefit students in the future. We need a teacher like him even more in the early twenty-first century. This absorbing, respectful and inspiring biography belongs on every library shelf.

Wonderful story all kids to know
Most school-age children grow up learning about George Washington Carver, and about all his wonderful inventions with peanuts. In fact, because of these inventions, he became known as "The Peanut Man," an identity that George Washington Carver wanted to shed.

George was born to a slave woman in southern Missouri, but when he was young his mother was kidnapped and he never saw her again. George and his brother Jim were raised by the farm owners, and treated as their own kids. In fact, Mr. and Mrs. Carver encouraged George to further his education when they realized how talented he was with plants.

George went on to go to school and colleges, eventually earning his master's degree in Iowa before being called to Alabama to work. When he first arrived there, he was shocked by the poverty and devastation. He quickly developed the motto "Make grass grow"-and he promptly did just that, made grass grow on the campus, and then in the agriculture department that he directed.

There are some facts that are misrepresented about George in public education--for instance, I always heard that George Washington Carver invented peanut butter. According to this book, he didn't, but did come up with several other imaginative uses for it.

I read the book in one sitting out loud to my 12- and 6-year-old daughters. I appreciated how educational it was, but it was a bit hard to read all at once. It didn't hold my six-year-olds attention long either. My older daughter, on the other hand, was fascinated by the story as this was more information than she'd ever seen on this interesting historical character.

George Washington Carver is highly recommended for public school teachers, and home school students alike. Stock full of information, your child (and you!) are sure to go away with little known tidbits about this wonderful inventor.

Armchair Interviews says: Most interesting and educational.