My older gifted students who are into nature would enjoy this book. I learned things, too! Plants can see? Mind control? Water-lily-type leaves hold up humans? It is aimed at more of an adult audience, and falls somewhere in between the academic-dry style and the "wow-that-is-amazing" style of writing, which is why I know that not all of my students would be interested in it. My favorite part was about hot peppers and the people who eat the really spicy ones.

I really need to stop reading non-fiction books about things that end up being food, because I get a horrid complex about eating other living things, such as pigs, chickens, etc. I thought I would be safe with reading about plants. WRONG!! They seem to have rudimentary vision, can think to a degree and can mind control ants and goodness knows what else by manipulation and deception. So not only worried they can feel and get upset, but also kind of creepy too. Horror fans take note!

This book was very informative, but I didn't have all of the works cited and notes that I would have liked with this. Footnotes would have been AWESOME, but it was not to be.

Some REALLY cool concepts at the end of the book, such as the self-sustainable, floating food growing Jellyfish Barge (which no investor seems to want to invest in. I guess feeding the hungry masses isn't good enough for them to put money into it.) and the robots created using plants as the basis for them. I would have loved to have read more about that. Also, doing experiments in zero G on the "Vomit Comet" is something I have always dreamed of (well, zero G in space, not on the "Vomit Comet", but close enough.) was also immensely interesting. Who says science can't be fun?

Very good book. 3.5 stars, because I wanted more notes/footnotes, rounded up to 4, because very interesting way to look at plants and to learn from them.

Oh, as with all non-fiction, there are a few bits where the whole "humans are really only good at killing/destroying things" comes out. Humankind has does some wonderful things, but we have also done some pretty crappy things too. This book doesn't shy away from the bad, as well as getting into the good.

Definitely recommended to those interested in nature. I would say this could work for YA on up. Maybe even the precocious middle reader.

My thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for an eARC copy of this book to read and review.

Amazing exploration of plants and science. A great read for environmentalists and nonfiction fans. Also, while on the drier side of nonfiction writing that I enjoy, it was definitely not as dry as academic writing.