The author recreates implausible childhood scenes of four men associated with plant engineering: Norman Borlaug, Henry Wallace, Moses Carver and George Washington Carver. The text somewhat clumsily connects these stories as it introduces each boy and then explains his future accomplishments.
The prose doesn't engage me. Each boy's story begins with, "I want to tell you a story about the boy who changed the world". Ugg. The story reads like there was at one time maybe a spark there, but having to make all those connections in the chosen format sucked the life out of it.
Having worked in children's publishing, this book feels to me like there were too many cooks in the kitchen and someone tried to make them all happy. Like my favorite publisher ever (Sherrill Flora of Key Education), used to tell me, when you try to make everybody happy, nobody will be.
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