Ethics Trading

I recently stumbled across this via facebook, it’s amazing what you can wander across online.  Anyway, I got myself sent a review copy and I’ve read it twice now so I’d better get on with writing the review….

Hope and the Super Green Highway.

Hope MacGregor is around ten years old, or at least she was ten in the previous book, Hope and the Magic Martian, so she’s about that age… A typically curious child she lives in the not too distant future when Carbon rationing is in full effect and the products and energy we use have their full cost applied – so a kilo of bananas is over £7. Think about it and look at the price of bananas next time you go shopping and then think about how far they’ve travelled and how much fuel they’ve used to get to you…

That’s what this book does, it makes you think. It’s packed full of information and ideas as well as telling a good story that will have your child asking questions and questioning why we don’t do more in terms of caring for our world.

I loved the small details such as a baby being carried in a brightly coloured sling, the tag-along pod for a small child to be able to join in cycling rather than using a car, knowing the local producers of food and other items – like they’re every day things – but think about it, how many local farmers and craftspeople do you know by name? Do you know where your sausages come from? Where the pigs were raised, how they were raised? Have you ever grown something to eat? Do you know how far the potatoes you had for tea have travelled to get to you?

This book raises many questions and ideas and really does make you think. But what I really want to know is, does Graham at Port City Zoo know of a breeding pair of Golden Toads in captivity somewhere that could be used in a reintroduction program for Juan’s Cloud Forest? I was waiting until the very last page for Hope to go back and ask him…..

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