barrsfca 's review for:

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba

3.0

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A truly amazing story about a kid in a very poor village in Malawi who, after not having money to go to school, learned to build a windmill from books in the library and used it to power his family's house. He got a lot of attention for his work and it spread to other houses and other villages. While the story is amazing, only about 30% of the book is really about the windmill--the rest is a focuses on the Malawian famines that hit the country so hard in over the past 15 years or so. I would have loved to have learned more about how the idea spread after he got it built and the longer-term impact of his work. Amazing kid, great story, decent book.