While back, an email came into my possession containing the (currently available) reader copy of Hero for the Hungry : The Life and Work of Work of Norman Borlaug by Peggy Thomas and illustrator Sam Kalda. The first part of the first half was interesting. It gave a nice introduction to the man that was Norman Borlaug. Starting with him as a young farm child to his college years, we see how he would eventually end up in Mexico learning as much as he would teach the local farmers. However, the middle of that first half starts to cover his actual career, it starts to become burdened down with a lot of details and the pace becomes much slower, and to be honest, the pace was not going gangbusters to start with!
This is not to say that this biography was bad, it just became heavy on the facts and made things feel like the author needed to fill a quota of words. Not even 50% through the book and we find ourselves still in Mexico, not even in the 1950s. Mexico obviously will become the starting grounds for what Borlaug’s career would become, but I was wanting to get there! Not to say that this was bad, but the subjects of farming, plants and some political settings are not for everyone and the reader might feel a little bogged down.
And with that said, I really can’t wait to learn more about this man who saw the troubles of farmers, learned contemporary ways of thinking about how to farm, how to deal with the diseases, over farming and other troubles the land would face all because fate would show him the Great Depression, war and the good people who just wanted to feed their families. And this is just halfway in! It’s packed with a non-fiction story of Norm’s life, plus varying sized side boxes that will give more information on the subject, or historical settings. A subject we take for granted, food and the growing of it, has a long history, and thanks to Norman Borlaug, it can still grow.