Earth Matters: Two innovative New Zealand non-fiction books encourage children and young people to reimagine our cities and explore the natural world under our noses.
Ultrawild: An Audacious Plan to Rewild Every City on Earth
Author and illustrator: Steve Mushin
Allen and Unwin 2023
Is it possible to crush climate change and save the planet by transforming every city on Earth into jungle? This is the question that author and illustrator Steve Mushin attempts to answer in his bold, optimistic book Ultrawild. To ultrawild – Mushin’s made-up word for transforming areas into ecosystem habitats for wild animals, wild plants and wild humans – will require dramatic changes to the way we live, and complex new contraptions. ‘It’s going to be mind-boggling, chaotic fun!’ he says.
Mushin is a hybrid greenie and techie geek: an industrial designer, artist, inventor and science communicator. His book contains 100 unique inventions he has dreamed up with feedback from top scientists and engineers, all contributing to his vision for new sustainable cities. These range from compost-firing cannons to 3D printer chickens to converting abandoned sewers into underground rivers and riding through them in submarines. But no matter how ‘ludicrous’ or ‘bonkers’– words Mushin uses frequently and with pride – these ideas sound, they’re all based on sound scientific principles.
Even more important than the inventions is the creative thinking that Ultrawild encourages. Mushin believes the only way out of the mess the planet is in is to come up with extraordinary possibilities,even terribly dangerous ones ‘that may terrify boring people.’ He understands the enormity of the problem. Two-thirds of the way through this 80-page hardback thought experiment, having shown his ideas can work, he falls into depression as he realises that humanity’s use of fossil fuels has sped up and the problem is even greater than he thought.
Mushin takes heart from rewilding projects around the world, including New Zealand’s Predator-Free 2050 Project. He reminds himself that human ingenuity is limitless and new technology can quickly change the way we live. Two photos of a New York street prove his point: the first, taken in 1903, shows dozens of horse-drawn carriages and only one car; 12 years later the street is full of cars and only one horse. The process of ultrawilding itself will transform our minds, he says, and lead to new ways of living and growing food that we can’t even begin to imagine now.
Ultrawild is aimed at readers nine years and older who can grasp the ideas that spill out of Mushin’s brain in comic book speech bubbles and illustrations as dizzying as the text. Children who study this big-hearted book will be led into new thinking about the great environmental challenge that presses on their generation more than any other: climate change.
Behind Ultrawild is a website (https://www.ultrawild.org/) that lays out all the maths, science and research underlying Mushin’s inventions. Teachers’ notes can be downloaded and he is available for school visits and workshops.
Ultrawild won the 2024 non-fiction award in the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, and best designed children’s non-fiction book in the 2024 Australian Book Design Awards.
A review in The Guardian called it ‘a brain-meltingly intricate and inspiring compendium of the gigantic ideas needed to repair the planet’.
The Observologist: A Handbook for Mounting Very Small Scientific Expeditions
Author and illustrator: Giselle Clarkson
Gecko Press 2023
‘A good thing about being young,’ writes Greytown author and illustrator Giselle Clarkson, ‘is that you’re closer to the ground than most adults, so you have an excellent eye for what’s going on down there.’ So true: our small grandson will yell triumphantly, ‘There’s one!’ as we track the source of ants plaguing our kitchen.
You won’t find ‘observologist’ in the Oxford Dictionary but it sums up the intent of this informative, engaging book: to encourage kids to look closely at the natural world around them. All that’s required is curiosity, patience, respect and awe, although a magnifying glass, camera or torch can also be handy.
In our experience, kids love taking the lid off a compost bin and having a dig around, watching slaters and worms and spiders scurry in all directions – and holding them if they’re brave. Clarkson mines their enthusiasm. Bugs, slugs, butterflies, bees, fungi, leaves, seeds and bird poop are just some of the everyday phenomena that come under her scrutiny. Thanks to her, we now know that woodlice have more than 13 names: not just ‘slaters’ but ‘tiggy-hogs’, ‘johnny-grumps’ and ‘chuggie pigs’.
It’s not necessary to have your own garden to become an observologist. Drains, shady walls, puddles, pavements and behind the curtains are all habitats for small critters doing interesting things if you look carefully. Ants with their heads together are having a conversation (of sorts). Birds only have one hole for poops and piddles. Freshwater snails can walk upside down on the surface tension of the water.
It’s easy to get absorbed by one interesting observation after another in this 120-page hardback book: Ooh, I didn’t know that. Scientific names for species and body parts, and big words in general (flamboyantly, miniscule, ensconced) may daunt a less able reader. But the tone of the text is playful, aided by the author’s Quentin Blake-like illustrations which are not only true to life but somehow infuse the bugs (and people, kids, animals, crabs and cockroaches) with personality.
Clarkson has practical advice to protect children and the creatures they study. She suggests activities that we recall doing as kids: putting a rose thorn on your nose to make a rhino horn, playing with sycamore seed helicopters, bending a plantain head to make a pea shooter. There are ideas for journaling, and a page dedicated to organising collections of feathers, beetles, leaves, shells, discarded insect skins. All in all, The Observologist is an engrossing book that deserves its place on the non-fiction shortlist for the 2024 NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.
Pip Desmond and Pat Martin are writers and editors who run communications company 2Write. They have been reading books to their three children and eight grandchildren for four decades.