George Washington Carver

An advanced picture-book biography of scientist, artist and teacher George Washington Carver, Tonya Bolding's title pairs a well-written narrative, following Carver from his childhood in Missouri, through his many years of struggle to get an education, and his eventual fame, while working at the

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Tuskegee Institute, with numerous photographs and illustrations. Informative and engaging, George Washington Carver highlights the many achievements of this extraordinary man, in a variety of fields, while also emphasizing the importance of its subject's overall philosophy about the natural world, and treating that world with reverence and respect. A philosophy that, in light of today's more ecologically conscious world, can be said to be prophetic...

I can't say that I really knew a great deal about George Washington Carver, going into this book - like some other readers, I had erroneously believed that he invented peanut-butter, but that was about it - so I learned a great deal from it. I didn't know that his erstwhile German-American owners (said to be against slavery? that part wasn't quite clear to me, although the narrative mentions that he and his family might have been a "mercy purchase?"), raised him as a son, after emancipation. I didn't know that he was educated in Iowa, far from the South (I tended to think of him in connection to Tuskegee), or that he was an accomplished painter, inducted in 1916 into England's Royal Society of Arts. I'm glad that this book was chosen as one of our Novemeber selections, for the Picture-Book Club to which I belong, where our theme this month is "inventions," as I enjoyed the reading experience, and found it most informative!

Give that it is a little more advanced that the average picture-book, George Washington Carver is a title I would recommend to young biography readers who are in the upper elementary, or middle grades.

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This book is about George Washington Carver. This book tells about different situations he faced in his lifetime. George was born in the Missouri's Ozark Region during the Civil War. About six criminials invaded the farm and the criminials took his mom. He never saw her again.

This book could be

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used in a history classroom. I believe this would be a good book for students to read if they are studying about George Washington Carver. I believe it would help them see what George went through during his lifetime.

I would give this book a rating of 5. Georgw was born in the Missouri's Ozark region during the Civil War. He faced many challenges throughout his lifetime. His mom was taken away by criminials. George and his brother never saw there mother again. The nearest school to where George lived was in Locust Grove, but it was only for white students. He had a passion for plants. People called him the "Plant Doctor". He went to school in Neosho. He finally finished high school in 1885 in Minneapolis, Kansas. He applied to Highland University but he was denied admission because of his race. Washington enrolled in Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. When he entered college he wanted to be a professional painter. He earned a bachelors and masters degree from Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm in horticulture. The college were he earned his degree made him an associate professor of botany. Booker T. Washington lured him away from this school. He took the job at Tuskegee and he taught the agricultural classes. He was very successful in his career.

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This is an interesting book. It gives insight to George Washington Carver’s upbringing and journey through life. The text is simplified and broken up by real photographs, and art by Carver. The feel of this book is akin to a kind of scrap book format. This book would be best suited for grades

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3-6. I rated this book 4 out of 5 because, while it is informative, has good pictures, and an easy to follow story, there is a lack of an in depth look at more of the scientific aspect. I would consider this book more of a broad overview of Carver’s life.

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G.W.Carver was a Missouri native who was born into slavery and his biography goes through his life describing his passion for nature and success he had exploring it. Throughout this book, actual pictures of Carver and his life can be seen. Details of how Carver’s love and interest in plants and

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the Earth’s soil lead him to devote his time and life to the research and study such things of nature. Although this biography is not lengthy it has a lot to offer in regards to how Carver was able to make such great strides in science through trial and error. Students learn the many inventions such as foods and medicines that Carver is responsible for. George Washing Carver and his biography would be an excellent resource for students of the middle elementary grades. This biography details how Carver preformed his research and students can see where the study of agriculture all began. I rate this book a 5 out of 5 as it includes the most important aspects of George Washing Carver’s life in a short picture book. The information in this book is both valuable and useful.

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I enjoyed reading this biography of George Washington Carver. I learned some new information about his life and achievements.Overall, this was an interesting read and contains some great facts. The pictures provide good visuals for the text and enhance the reading experience. I got a bit bored with

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some of the text. I felt as though it were slow moving at times. I would still recommend it as a book to have in your classroom library. Students do not usually hear too much about George Washington Carver, and this book could provide them with a great opportunity.

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An environmentalist at heart. George Washington Carver taught about the land and giving back to the land. The more you protected the land the more a person would sow. A good book to discuss race, education, giving back to others. How not to let others disuade you from your own goals. This book

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could be valuable at all age levels.

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Dispite George Washington Carver's humble beginnings as a poor slave in the Ozark's Region of Missouri, he managed, against all odds, to become one of the most highly respected naturalists, and sought after speakers during his lifetime. While he was growing up he gained a lot of knowledge about how

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to be self-sufficient, and to work hard. From a young age, he realized that his ability to get an education was going to be next to impossible as a black man, so he began to travel around in search of educational opportunities and mentorships that interested him. Carver developed his art through these opportunities, and then went on to study horticulture and botany, earning his bachelors and masters degree from Iowa's Agricultural College. Later, he had several offers to work at universities, and one of these opportunities just happened to be for the famous Booker T. Washington, a man that he admired greatly. The position with Washington was for blacks only, in Tuskegee, Alabama, and even though he had spent most of his life living around whites, he decided to go outside his comfort zone in order to continue his own educational experience. While working in Tuskegee, Carver helped develop a number of programs, and took his "waste not, want not" principles to the next level by applying this to agriculture. Carver would spend the rest of his life living and working in Alabama, where he would author a number of bulletins on the multiple uses of or how to maximize production, of certain vegetables. He was even invited to Washington in his later years to give testimony on the the multiple uses of the peanut, and was thereafter dubbed as "The Peanut Man". As you will see from reading this book, Carver deserved to be remembered for much more than just the work he did with peanuts, for as it turns out his whole way of living life could be seen as an example from which today's organic and sustainability movements could learn something from.

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Retelling: This author shares photos from George Washington Carver's life or related to it. It's marvelous to see the actual spelling book he might have learned from, actual drawings and paintings he did using his unique paint-making formula. Carver had a gift for experimenting with nature to

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ensure that it would flourish. His neighbors in Missouri when he was young called him the "plant-doctor" because he found ways to save their ailing flowers and crops. He taught at a historically black college for run by Booker T. Washington called Tuskegee university. There Carver aimed at expanding the way we use natural resources, particularly the peanut, the sweet-potato, and soybeans. He was uniquely resourceful, emphasizing recycling and finding new ways to reduce waste.

Thoughts and Feelings: The afterward in this biography was particularly interesting. After he died, there was no agreement about the place he should have in history. Some resented the fact that Carver did not support open protests of segregation. But even when segregation was abolished, the economic disparity between blacks and whites continued to divide the country. I imagine, George Washington Carver's ability to educate the poor students of Tuskegee to achieve a higher quality of life despite limited resources did something to narrow that gap. I would need to research who his students were and what became of them to investigate that possibility.

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I knew nothing about this man until I read the book. The book combines photographs of the man, photos of artefacts and a considerable number of pictures of his own art. The book uses a large font and breaks the information into easily readable sections. The afterword explains his legacy for today.

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Carver overcame circumstances and tragedy to pursue his thoughts and dreams.

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For everyone tired of seeing the tired old series biographies of George Washington Carver trotted out every February, this book is for you. Beautifully illustrated and packaged this biography of "the Peanut Man" is very readable.

Summary: This is a biography of George Washington Carver, from his birth into slavery, through his education and career, to his death. It covers his time as a pioneer, his horticultural research, his time at Tuskegee Institute. It also emphasizes his Christian testimony.

Genre: Biography

Media: Real

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pictures

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This biography of G. W. Carver tells the amazing story of how very humble beginings and a love of plants led him to become very famous in his works in agriculture and farming. His advice helped many to appreciate the farms should be ran. He also recieved many honors and awards for his contributions

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to society.

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The book is great for history of the peanut. It tells how a slave started as an artist turned agriculturist turned chemist. It has illustrations of real pictures of the historical steps into what made George Washington Carver the famous "peanut man" an historical figure.

Summary: This is a straightforward, very rough sketch of the life of George Washington Carver. It is a simple timeline from his birth in rural Missouri to his death in 1943. The book avoids delving into his personal life, instead focusing on his work in the farm world. Carver is another example of

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a human being who seemed to immerse himself into his life, giving passionately to the world around him. He worked for the good of many. I think this kind of role model is very important for kids to encounter.

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This book does a nice job at giving the reader a view of Carver the human, and not just Carver the "peanut man." Bolden uses interesting language and fun doses of alliteration to keep the reader interested. ("Making mounds of money wasn't his motivation.") Pictures of Carver's artwork help to show

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the artist side, and more technical drawings and photographs of his research and education efforts show his love for the earth, as well as a strong desire to help the poor farmer. The stories of his childhood, including his kidnapping, loss of mother, and moving around to be allowed to attend to school, were all new to me. This would be a nice book for upper elementary and middle readers. It could get a student interested enough in Carver to pursue further information. Some technical terms are parenthetically defined. There is no structure such as a glossary or chapters, which makes for a fluid story, but can make it a little harder to refer back to some of the details.

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I have been inspired by George Washington Carver since I was young, so I was excited to read a new and award-winning book about him. I really enjoyed everything about this book - the information presented, the photographs, the history, and the inspiration of this amazing man's life. For example, it

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takes an extraordinary person to speak before a U.S. House of Representatives committee on a presentation about peanut-derived products and go from having 10 minutes to make your case to the chairman telling him: "Your time is unlimited."

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This book was published in 2008 but looks like it was published earlier because it is profusely illustrated with fascinating reproductions of contemporary photographs. One of the extraordinary things about Carver's life was that he was born during the American Civil War (which would be better

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called something like the "War of the Southern Secession") and lived to be old enough to meet Franklin Delano Roosevelt. At the Tuskegee Institute, we see some very dapper young gentleman in a cutaway coat studying a cow skeleton, and then Carver as a much older man in more casual check trousers and a looser and less formal jacket. Carver is much like Nikola Tesla with his mustache and his intense passion about his chosen field of study, but less glamorous to posterity because electricity is more exciting to moderns than botany. In the best late Victorian tradition, he was also an outstanding painter of his beloved plants; there are similarities here with, e.g., the life of Beatrix Potter, who made her start as a technical illustrator. The photograph of Carver's personal microscope, which is beautiful, is from the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site.

(Carver could be pretty dry about his association in the public mind with peanuts and nothing but peanuts.)

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