For a truly inspi­ra­tional book, check out The Boy Who Har­nessed the Wind by inven­tor William Kamk­wamba and jour­nal­ist Bryan Mealer with pic­tures by Eliz­a­beth Zunon. Forced to drop out of school when famine struck Malawi, fourteen-year-old William turned to the local library where the pic­tures of wind­mills inspired him to build his own. Hop­ing to pro­vide a steady source of water for his family’s farm, he gath­ered mate­ri­als wher­ever he could find them. Using a bicy­cle wheel, plas­tic pipe and other odds and ends that chil­dren will rec­og­nize, William suc­ceeded in build­ing a work­ing wind­mill and pro­vid­ing energy for four light­bulbs and two radios. The deter­mi­na­tion and inge­nu­ity required for his suc­cess are astound­ing yet make it clear that we are all capa­ble of so much more than we might have imagined.

For adults, I highly rec­om­mend the full-length adult biog­ra­phy by the same name, but this pic­ture book adap­ta­tion is a won­der­ful way to intro­duce chil­dren to this amaz­ing story.  As with any adap­ta­tion, space con­straints made omis­sions were nec­es­sary. Ref­er­ences to his grandfather’s sto­ries are min­i­mal and I wish they had included the use of the wind­mill to charge neigh­bours’ cell phones. It demon­strates his entre­pre­neur­ial as well as sci­en­tific spirit and I think it would give Amer­i­can chil­dren an addi­tional point they could relate to. Nev­er­the­less, there is no short­age of con­nec­tions in The Boy Who Har­nessed the Wind. Use it to dis­cuss hunger, famine, libraries, edu­ca­tion, Africa, for­eign lan­guage learn­ing and, of course, inspire sci­ence projects.  It would take a heart of stone to not be inspired by William’s accomplishments.

Watch William Kamkwamba’s inter­view on The Daily Show or TED talk.

To see what oth­ers have been read­ing this week for the Non­fic­tion Pic­ture Book Read­ing Chal­lenge, check out the round up at Kid Lit Frenzy.