Anyone read |-- Hope & the Super Green Highway --|?
If you have, it'd be good to get a review. It looks pretty good...
- "The story gives a glimpse of how life could be when fuel is rationed and the cost of food reflects the miles it’s travelled."
Transition Towns Forum » Discuss
Eco book for kids - anyone read it yet?
(5 posts)-
Posted 4 months ago #
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It has been reviewed (see below), I have just ordered a copy :) Jonathan
"‘Hope and the Super Green Highway’ is Helen Moore’s brilliant page turning sequel to ‘Hope and the Magic Martian’. The author cleverly weaves together evocative facts about Nature from around the world with the web-surfing lifestyle of today’s children. The appearance of an exotic tropical tree frog in a box of bananas sets Hope off on a quest to learn more. The efforts of her internet pen pal, Cloud Boy, to protect his tropical rainforest inspire her and her grandmother to take steps to look after their own local, badly littered and dangerous wood. By setting this gripping story in a time when carbon is traded with ‘Ice Caps’, Helen Moore gives a glimpse of how life could be when fuel is rationed and the cost of food reflects the miles it’s travelled. Warm, intelligent, inspiring and thought provoking, this story is ideal for children from 8 to 12. It should be in every primary school. The meaning of this tale is in the heroine’s name. This is a story that gives hope, something that we all need right now."
- Eric Maddern, storyteller and children's author
Posted 4 months ago # -
I was looking for a review from someone involved in Transition. I'm aware of how book reviews are indirectly reciprocated between authors, and wanted a fully independent voice.
So, anyone else read it?
Posted 4 months ago # -
I haven't read this book, but about a year ago I read a teenage fiction book called 'The Carbon Diaries 2015' by Saci Lloyd. (Sorry if this is a change of subject as it is not 'Hope and the super green highway, but it is a book well worth reading so I thought I'd mention it here).
What struck me as a strong point of this book is that it gives a glimpse of what would happen if the government suddenly imposed carbon rationing upon people who had previously not made any of their own journeys into Transition. There are those who believe that carbon reductions should all be done at government level and then implemented downwards (the 'they will solve it' way of thinking).
This book really highlights why that will not work, and although the book chronicles hard times as the characters all adapt with having to get by with less of everything, it is ultimately not cynical and hopeless.
Posted 1 month ago # -
Jane - we don't know "what will not work". We're in a complex system and it's pretty much impossible to predict a lot of the potential outcomes.
There are lots of ways of implementing rationing, and the author may have chosen one option so that it created the kind of "conflict" that he/she needed to move the story on.
It's important to understand that a money economy is an economy based on rationing. You can't get the goods if you don't have the coupons with the queen's head or the dead prezzes on them. This is "economic" rationing. Schemes such as Tradable Energy Quotas www.teqs.net aim to be "equitable" rationing.
Ben.
Posted 1 month ago #
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