Review by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Everyone Can be a herO
Published and printed in U.K. by Inside Outsider Publications at Telfs, Hendon Wood Lane, London N.W.7.4HT.
The book is printed on recycled paper and the covers are made from re-used cardboard and recycled or re-used paper, some glue and a piece of string.
ISBN 978-0-9556679-09.
This a school library book from the future, on loan from Pangaea and due to be renewed or returned on 30th October 2040.
There has already been a nuclear accident and there aren't too many resources left either.
People have to grow food wherever they can.
It's the summer holidays, however, and four teenagers would like to spend it helping on the family allotments, making music with their friends and generally lolling around.
The trouble is that, although the people are trying to build a better future, does the government have a different agenda?
Where are the nuclear trains going?
Why do they only run at night and where are they stopping?
What are they unloading? Why will no-one talk about it and where have the good guys gone?
It's up to the teenagers to find out.
Armed with little else than solid-wheeled bicycles, cameras and some memory sticks, they travel through a different, greener England, organically farmed and self-sufficient.
What they find, and how they tell people, changes the future of the country.
This is a real good book and also one that give you a really good feeling and can be highly recommended.
Instead of a doom and gloom story we are, in this book, presented with one of hope and optimism of how things could get real after an incident.
Let us just hope that this book finds its way into the hands of many young people who might just get inspired to act. We need youngsters to emulate the young heroes in the book as that is, I think, the Planet's only hope.
Politicians, the professional ones, cannot be trusted with the Earth's future, so much is sure; and neither can corporations.
A completely new society is needed in the way of how the people live in “Everyone Can be a herO”, and maybe a lot better still even. But, would they let us?
The one thing that I really liked was a the mention of the use of herbs, wild and cultivated, for food and especially for medicinal uses, and also the mention of companion planting for growing food.
I have just one issue and that is the mention, unfathomable to me, of alternators being used in conjunction with solar voltaic cells. As far as I see solar cells they can directly be used to charge a bank of batteries and would not require an alternator. Feeding current into the national grid would require, though an inverter, an up-converter, while the batteries would be charged with DC.
The latter would be something with which to generate 12V DC using a small windmill, for example.
This book, in my opinion, is a great story and it is a real page turner. Who cares that it is self-published and here and there could do with a little editing. I have enjoyed every minute reading “Everyone Can be a herO” and just wonder as to whether a sequel could be considered.
The GREEN (LIVING) REVIEW is happy to endorse this book.
Copyright © 2010 Michael Smith
Full Disclosure Statement: The GREEN (LIVING) REVIEW received no compensation for any component of this book review.
