Karl, Get Out of the Garden!: Carolus Linnaeus and the Naming of Everything [Hardcover]

Do you know what aSolanum caule inermi herbaceo, foliis pinnatis incises, racemis simplicibusis?*
 
Carolus (Karl) Linnaeus started off as a curious child who loved exploring the garden. Despite his intelligence—and his mother's scoldings—he was a poor student, preferring to be outdoors with his beloved plants and bugs. As he grew up, Karl's love of nature led him to take on a seemingly impossible task: to give a scientific name to every living thing on earth. The result was the Linnaean system—the basis for the classification system used by biologists around the world today. Backyard sciences are brought to life in beautiful color.

Back matter includes more information about Linnaeus and scientific classification, a classification chart, a time line, source notes, resources for young readers, and a bibliography.

*it's a tomato!


A handsome introductory book on Linnaeus and his work — Booklist, starred review

A good introduction to a man in a class by himself — Kirkus Reviews

Lends significant humanity to the naturalist — Publisher's Weekly

The biographical approach to a knotty scientific subject makes this a valuable addition to STEM and biography collections — School Library Journal
Fascinated by plants from an early age, Karl Linné, better known today as Linnaeus, preferred the garden to the schoolroom. Later, he chose to study medicine, a discipline that, in the early 1700s, often relied on plants for healing. And in that pursuit, he found his calling. Realizing that the many different names used for each plant were making it difficult to communicate about which specific one might cure an ailment, Linnaeus decided to name every plant and animal, and he set up an organized system to classify them. Though controversial in its day, it became the standard system of scientific classification and nomenclature, and it survives in modified form todayl£Í