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: #524840 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 40 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780810993662
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

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

An outstanding coverage, not to be missed!
Books about George Washington Carver are typically written for an older age range, so it's refreshing to find a picturebook biography on the subject complete with color illustration and vintage black and white photos throughout. Kids in grades 3-5 will find it most accessible, following his early life as a slave and orphan, his college achievement as the first Afro-American to attend Iowa State, and to his work in conservation. An outstanding coverage, not to be missed!

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.