Michael & Mia E-Book

Georg Hohbach

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 115

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Illustrated Middle Grade Novel (inside the paperback: colored illustrations only in the German-language market; other territories: illustrations in black and white) On a surprise-packed voyage of discovery through the solar system and on planet earth, Michael and Mia, two curious chemistry fans, make a groundbreaking and amazing discovery: uncovering how humankind can maximally benefit from the ingenious circulatory system of nature. Ultimately the two joyfully and excitedly realize that both the present and the future of humankind and planet Earth can now be shaped positively-and by the next day, the whole world knows about it. Get to know the groundbreaking Cradle to Cradle design concept and its co-founder, the chemist Michael Braungart, based on an exciting adventure story plus an extra section with background information including the theme song Nature Lives as sheet music.

Leseprobe

“Nature gave us the correct recipe.” Michael Braungart & William McDonough (The Upcycle, North Point Press, 2013, p.221)

“The world will not evolve past its current state of crisis by using the same thinking that created the situation.” Albert Einstein (as quoted in: Cradle to Cradle by Michael Braungart & William McDonough, Vintage, 2009)

MICHAEL & MIA

An Adventure in the Positive Cycle of Nature

Concept by

George Hohbach

Story by

George Hohbach & Michael Braungart

Written by

George Hohbach & Ehrengard Hohbach

with

Scott Marcano

Illustrations of Part 1 by

Juan Romera

Illustrations of Part 2, Michael Cartoon, Photos, as well as

Music & Lyrics of the Song Nature Lives by

George Hohbach

Arrangement of the Song Nature Lives by

Alfred Huff

Sheet Music for the Song Nature Lives by

Alfred Huff, Isaac Sprintis

English Translation by

George Hohbach with Robin Palmer, author of the acclaimed Middle Grade book series Yours Truly, Lucy B.

Parker

CONTENTS

PART 1 Michael & Mia - An Adventure in the Positive Cycle of Nature

Chapter 1: Michael Meets Mia – Magic in the Air –

Chapter 2 Nature’s Wonder-City in Michael’s Garden – Creativity in Abundance –

Chapter 3: The Active Balance of Nature – Everything is One –

Chapter 4: Welcome to the Nature Reserve – The Large Unity-Network –

Chapter 5: The Positive Recipe of Nature – Part I – The Magic Equation –

Chapter 6: The Positive Recipe of Nature – Part II – All Moves in Circles –

Song NATURE LIVES –

PART 2 About Michael Braungart & Cradle to Cradle– Why the Cradle to Cradle design concept makes companies, people and governments partners in striving for eco-intelligent, climate-smart solutions –

Michael Braungart –

Inspirations from Michael Braungart’s Life for the Story Michael & Mia –

Acknowledgements

Appendix

Cradle to Cradle & Albert Einstein’s Findings About Symmetry

Further Reading

PART 1

Michael & Mia

An Adventure in the Positive Cycle of Nature

CHAPTER 1

MICHAEL MEETS MIA

-Magic in the Air-

“OK, you guys, listen up. I have come up with 10 topics for the school project due in three weeks. We’ll have teams of two students and each team will be assigned a topic for a presentation. So, let’s first pick names out of this golden bowl here on my desk to see who will be together as a team.”

Michael didn’t listen closely any longer to what his teacher, Mrs. Friday, continued to say. Instead, Michael was looking over to Mia, his pretty new classmate. Being in a team with her would be freaking awesome! Instantly, Michael’s heart started to beat faster, and in that second, Mia turned around and smiled at him. OMG! Now, Michael’s heart almost stopped beating, because Mia kept glancing and smiling at him! But on top of that, it seemed like all his fellow students were grinning at him too. This was kinda strange. What on earth was going on?!

“Michael! Michael!” He suddenly became aware of Mrs. Friday, who seemingly out of nowhere had appeared right next to his desk.

“Yes,” Michael said, not knowing why Mrs. Friday had approached him.

“Could you please answer my question, young man. Are you okay with opening the school project presentations together with Mia?! This opening presentation will get extra time and be much longer than the others. Mia already said `Yes´. So, what about you?!”

Michael couldn’t believe his ears. He was so nervous that he just couldn’t find his voice. It was gone, totally gone. It must have taken off and hidden itself on the dark side of the moon, or gotten sucked into a black hole and spit out in some strange, whacked-out place outside the Milky Way! The force was definitely not with him.

“Michael!” he heard his English teacher again. Since he couldn’t speak at the moment, he kept his mouth closed—as this seemed to be the next best thing to do—and just smiled and nodded affirmatively, like Mia did.

Their eyes met like never before. Time seemed to have come to a complete halt. In a flash, Michael saw Mia and himself in a bright shining vision: With an unexpected boost of infinitely abundant and radiating energy, incredible images came flooding into his mind’s eye for a split second. Suddenly, all around them were sparkling, colorful stars. At the bottom of the image, Michael could read in intensely shining letters:

TEAM MICHAEL & MIA

Now, he could sense a powerful and yet totally balanced force spiraling through his entire body. It was so EPIC!

“Are you OK?” the teacher asked.

“Never better,” Michael replied as he snapped out of his temporary vision. “Great things are possible.”

After English class was over, Mia walked over to Michael, who tried to act as cool and normal as possible—which resulted in him inadvertently pushing his books off the desk.

“So, we’ll be partners,” she said.

“Yep,” said Michael as he quickly picked up his books and managed to hit his elbow against the chair during the process. “Ouch!”

“Yeah, um, what do you think about the topic we were assigned?” Mia asked.

“Well…,” Michael murmured before pausing, because he had not actually listened when Mrs. Friday had announced their topic. “I guess, it’s interesting for the entire class,” he said slightly nervously, trying to talk his way out of the situation.

“Guess, so, too,” Mia said, “we’ll definitely make it interesting. I’m so glad we don’t have to give a talk about the waste problem of the 21st century, by the way. I mean, what are you gonna say about that. All the toxic waste everywhere. That’s so not inspiring.”

“Tough topic,” Michael agreed, trying hard to sound cool and not trip over anything while leaving the classroom with Mia.

“Seriously,” Mia continued, “this waste problem…waste on all levels of the oceans, in the air, in the soil, water, in our clothes. What are we gonna do about it?”

“You’d need a pretty dope idea to fix that,” Michael added.

And then, suddenly, it was like Michael and Mia could fly through the air. Nobody noticed, but the two hovered through the hallway, then flew right through their green, metal lockers and the thick brick wall of the high school building and landed gently in front of the countless yellow school busses waiting outside.

“What the heck was that?” Michael thought with total amazement.

Mia looked very surprised, too. “Did we just fly through the wall down from 3rd floor to the parking lot?” she asked cautiously, as if she doubted her own words.

“I-I don’t think that this is possible,” Michael replied, “actually for many reasons, like logic or even reality. Although…I just asked myself the same question to be honest. And this is so freaking weird!”

Mia laughed. “We probably got so carried away babbling with each other that we didn’t notice that we walked down the stairs and exited the school, like normal people.”

“Right, right,” Michael confirmed. “That’s what normal people do. Absolutely. Perfectly usual, everyday-just-walking-down-the-stairs-and-through-the-doors-kinda stuff. Simple. Fine. Alright.”

“Okay then,” Mia said, “I’ll, um, uh, stop by your house later this afternoon so we can start working on our presentation. If we nail it, our topic `The Balance of Nature´ will be a presentation to remember.”

“We sure will!” Michael was super relieved that Mia had just filled him in on the topic which Mrs. Friday had assigned to them.

With a fist bump, they said goodbye. Michael got on his bus. He smiled. He felt great. Suddenly, a marvelous and wonderful magic had entered his life.

For the next three weeks, Michael and Mia met after school several times a week and on weekends. They had a lot of fun together researching the topic of “Nature’s Balance”. For countless hours, they read as many books as possible, looked up articles on the internet, watched videos on TV and on YouTube, talked and skyped with scientists and frequently exchanged ideas via their smartphones. However, the whole time, very strange things kept happening.

Mia, for instance, texted Michael while shopping at the mall, and she ended up buying deep sea fishing equipment instead of orange juice.

One time, Michael was talking with Mia on the phone, when suddenly he found himself in the middle of a crowded, busy football field—30 miles away from his village. A furious referee stood next to him, heavily blowing into his whistle and yelling:

“How can one not hear that?!”

“Maybe you have a hearing problem,” Michael answered politely, and while crawling his way through an intricate cheerleader dance formation, he continued chatting with Mia and started heading back home. As he went, he walked across a busy runway with planes landing and taking off, he marched across a highway during rush hour, walked off a bridge right onto the top of a freight train! There, he grabbed the long iron cable dangling off the end of a huge construction crane that swung him over onto the roof of a school bus, and that very bus, a little later, stopped right in front of his house. Quickly, Michael, continuing his phone call, slid down the light pole next to the bus and was welcomed by his father with a worried/angry reproach:

“Michael! Where have you been all day?!”

“I just went for a quick walk around the block. No big deal, dad.”

“Michael, you…”

“What? Nothing happened. I’m just talking to Mia on the phone.”

Mia, meanwhile, was coloring the nails of her toes with a lipstick. Her mom came by and said: “Whatcha doin’, honey?”

“What?!” Mia replied, not appreciating the interruption of her teleconference with Michael. “It’s just lipstick, mom!”

“Ya-ha, exactly. LIP-STICK!”

“I know,” Mia said, shaking her head. Totally oblivious of the entire painting-nail-toes-with-lipstick situation, she continued both coloring her toes’ nails and talking to Michael.

For Michael, Mia Chang was the best friend he could have wished for. Mia had recently moved from Beijing to the United States. Her chemistry professor father was from China, but her mother had grown up in a city close to the town in California where Michael lived. They had moved so that Mia's father could do research at a nearby institute for an extended period of time. This was all a stroke of good luck for Michael because, as he discovered, Mia was full of crazy ideas, an insatiable curiosity and she loved to laugh. Plus, on top of that, she was pretty cute.

As for Mia, she felt quite comfortable around Michael as well. For one, he was a really great listener. Many times, he would just look at her with a smile, not saying a word while he glanced at her lips—which meant he was listening intently.

The more time they spent together, the more often these totally unexplainable, magical moments would happen. Suddenly, their smartphones would hover in midair for several seconds, being surrounded by a glimmering golden light. Or, the paper of their notebooks changed colors from white to yellow to red and green. There were even times, when people or animals that they saw in books or videos came right out of the pictures or screens! They would actually stand on their desks, jump onto plants in their rooms or hop into their mugs. One time, a group of monkeys threw bananas at them, right out of the documentary they were watching on YouTube. Though the bananas were rather small, they did taste pretty delicious. The young researchers never really knew what to say or do about these enchanted moments. They could not talk to anybody about this. It would just sound too crazy and could even lead to people unfriending them on social media. Not to mention the reactions of their parents, who, no doubt, would assail them with super long, boring lectures about “not living in a fantasy world”—that was a door they definitely did not want to open. Trying to film these magical occurrences never succeeded either. For some reason, the magic always stopped right before they could grab their smartphones. So, they just wondered in amazement every time something magical happened, laughed and shrugged their shoulders. While it was scary at first, after two weeks, they started enjoying these surprise incidences.

All in all, they really had a great time. There were also moments when they talked to their fellow classmates. They repeatedly met the team that researched the global waste problem. When they did, their cheery mood instantly always went downhill—like from zero to at least a minus 5000—especially when Betty and Thomas talked about how widespread the waste issue was; on top off all the other environmental problems. Michael and Mia were always relieved that their topic of “The Balance of Nature” was inspiring and uplifting for them. It invigorated their creativity, imagination and curiosity in a totally awesome way. And that was a good thing, not least because Albert Einstein had once said that imagination and curiosity are more important than knowledge, which is limited. In addition, they had these special magical moments, which was the coolest secret ever!

Sadly, the three weeks went by far too quickly. One more weekend, and Michael and Mia would open the school project days with their special presentation. As the date drew closer, electrifying excitement filled the air.

CHAPTER 2

NATURE’S WONDER-CITY IN MICHAEL’S

GARDEN

-Creativity in Abundance-