When they were told he was not smart enough to be a minister, Karl's parents considered apprenticing him to a shoemaker. What a disappointment he was until a teacher came along who noticed and appreciated Karl's love of plants and encouraged him to become a doctor.
His parents reluctantly agreed, with "What you enjoy doing, you will do well." Karl loved to be with plants. He loved learning what the plants could do for people. Over time he studied hard and began "using his beloved plants to cure people's ailments." But he had a problem. The plants all had different names. It depended on who was talking about them. It was chaos.
Karl recognized that animals had all different kinds of names and even the lowly dandelion could be referred to as a blowball or a swine's snout. He needed to bring order out of chaos. But there were millions of organisms ranging from mosses to cobras to daffodils. Could one person make order out of all of these species?
Karl rolled up his sleeves and set to it.
This is the story of Karl Linné the man who took on the naming and categorizing of living things. It reveals how he grouped the living things and what information he used to group them. Should the whales be in the same group as the mice?
This is the person who named us homo sapiens. This is the man who named dogs Canis and bees Apis. He divided the animal kingdom into eight classes including Class Paradoxa for "animals that were rumored to exist,"...animals like unicorns. He took Class Insecta and organized it into groups and within the groups he made orders.
This man who named so many things for us had different names for himself as well. He began life as Karl Linné and eventually used the Latin version of his name which is how we know him today: Carolus Linnaeus.
A fascinating exploration on the difference one person can make in the world.
48 pages 978-1580896061 Ages 7-10
Recommended by: Barb Langridge, abookandahug.com
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Do you know what a Solanum caule inermi herbaceo, foliis pinnatis incises, racemis simplicibus is?*
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.--from the publisher
