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Celebrate Earth Day

Celebrate Earth Day with a book, some windmills, and lots of inspiration

How will you celebrate Earth Day in April? If you’re looking for some extra inspiration, check out The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer. It's an amazing true story about how thirteen-year-old William built a windmill for his family with limited resources (he uses parts of a bicycle and other seemingly random materials) and little encouragement (the townspeople think he’s crazy).

After a terrible drought strikes his country of Malawi in Africa, William’s family doesn't have enough food to eat, and they don’t have any money to send him to school. To keep his mind active, William visits the library and comes across books on physics and energy. The only problem? The books are written in English. Having to rely on the pictures, diagrams, and what he’s figured out on his own about electricity, William realizes that the subjects in the book—explanations of electricity and energy—can help save his family.

As soon as you finish this book (probably even before) you’ll be asking for more books about windmills, how they work, and how you can use a few recycled materials and some wind energy to help families like William’s.

Find this book at the Morton Public Library!