Ultrawild: An Audacious Plan for Rewilding Every City on Earth by Steve Mushin

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Inspirational Fun and hilarious are some words to describe this book .

Wow! This is an extraordinary and brilliant way to pass on information by putting explosive ideas into a large picture book. Ultrawild is quite inspirational and from the beginning, the reader is drawn into the questions.

The first question is “COULD WE CRUSH CLIMATE CHANGE BY TRANSFORMING EVERY CITY ON EARTH INTO A JUNGLE?” Using small cartoon captions and images, the author explains that “Thinking about ridiculous ideas can be incredibly sensible.”  He feels we should push creative thinking to the limit to solve our problems.

“THE POWER OF POO,” is the heading for the next chapter and begins by saying that bones of hippopotamuses, lions and elephants have been found underground in London. All that beautiful compost has been lost. Then the composition of poo is examined and the benefits it brings to our soil. One idea is to blow up all our toilets and replace them with compost making machines.

Chapter 4 asks the question, “COULD WE TRANSFORM ALL THE LAMPOSTS IN THE WORLD INTO ARMOURED LUXURY HOTELS FOR NATIVE ANIMALS?” To do this we would need to use 3D printers to copy the features of trees onto lampposts. And so, the questions flow on.

Ultrawild is a visually stimulating and awesome book to browse. It contains a huge amount of information broken down into small, humorous, and interesting parts. After many examples, the author asks the readers to send him what they have invented. This is followed by a Glossary of Terms and then an Index to reference all the subjects covered. This could be a wonderful class project to present and discuss to create solutions for our planet.

Author                                                Steve Mushin
Publisher                                            A&U Children’s
ISBN                                                  9781760292812
Website                                              https://www.allenandunwin.com
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Review By Grasshopper2

Steve Mushin is an industrial designer, artist and inventor who collaborates with scientists and engineers to solve perplexing problems that no one else seems to know what to do about – like what can be done with explosive cow gas or how to make bikes fly or cities transform into jungles as fast as possible. Steve has exhibited large-scale design drawings and models around Australia and in Japan. He works between Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, and in 2015 received an Australian Design Honours award for his work in sustainable future thinking. Ultrawild is Steve’s first book.

 


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