Tadgell’s watercolors add both playful side business and accurate botanical illustration to this admiring child’s account of the famous scientist’s stopover in a rural community. George Washington Carver often spent weekends visiting settlements around Tuskegee with his "movable school" to dispense information about reclaiming depleted farmland, recycling and good agricultural practices. Avidly absorbing his injunctions to look closely at the natural world and to understand its interrelationships before changing or destroying anything, the young narrator and other children move a rose bush to a sunnier spot, make nature drawings, sample ice cream and other foods made from peanuts and “strange wild weeds,” then help dig and plant a garden outside their schoolhouse. Though fictionalized, the encounter presents Carver’s work and ideas in a simple, engaging way that will stay with young readers until they're ready for Marilyn Nelson's soaring Carver: A Life in Poems (2001). The endpapers present lovely illustrations of flora and fauna, complete with common and Latin names, and an author's note provides additional background on Carver's career. (Picture book. 7-9)
