Gr 3–5—Born in 1707, Karl Linné was an inquisitive child who enjoyed the outdoors, loved plants, and wanted to know the names for everything. He discovered that scientists, farmers, and doctors tended to disagree with one another about the naming of flora and fauna—the same plant might have several different titles. Linné wanted to bring order to this chaos, so he set out to create a convention from which to designate plants and animals. Linné classified and named more than 12,000 species of plants and animals, and his Latin classification system was accepted and used by scientists across the globe. What had seemed an insurmountable task was completed by Linné, portrayed here as a figure with a boundless imagination and fascination for nature. In 1757, he was knighted by the king of Sweden and thus gave himself a new name, Carolus Linnaeus. Stock's impressionistic pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations are subdued, with spots of bright color, and adeptly match the content and the tone of the work. VERDICT The biographical approach to a knotty scientific subject makes this a valuable addition to STEM and biography collections.—Patricia Ann Owens, formerly at Illinois Eastern Community Colleges, Mount Carmel