Can you build a windmill? William Kamkwamba can. The name of my book is The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind. The main character is a boy called William Kamkwamba. One big problem for William and his family is a famine that causes many deaths in where he lives. It takes place in Malawi, Africa around 2013. That’s where William lives. William made a windmill when he was only 14!
In Malawi Africa they use a different type of money. It is called Kwacha. Three kwacha is less than one American dollar.
I think William is an interesting character with an inspiring story. One word I would use to describe William is creative. For example, William and his family don’t have enough money for a real soccer ball. William makes one out of plastic bags that have been used already. He calls them jumbos. William also doesn’t buy toy cars or trucks. Instead, he makes them himself. He makes them out of things that some people would call garbage, but the things he uses can be used to build anything. He uses empty milk cartons, bottle caps, and the insides of tree branches to build his toy cars and trucks. It’s very interesting to learn how he uses these materials to make things that you wouldn’t typically think would and could be made out of those materials.
William is many things. But he is definitely not negative! William is a very optimistic person. William thinks about ways to make bad things good, and then he tries to make it reality. For example, one big problem for William and his family is that a drought hits Malawi and it gets very hard to survive because after the drought there was a famine. Luckily, they still have some maize from the year before the drought. William’s mother goes to the mill with corn to get flour. She then uses the flour to make a type of cake that she sells to all of the hungry people for three kwacha each. Half of her profit goes to William’s father’s friend who is a trader. This trader gives them a pail of maize for the money she gives him. This maize gets ground into flour and baked into more of the cakes for the next day. The other half of the profit goes to William’s family to buy food for themselves so they can survive the drought as well.
I have one more thing that I think is an extremely important character trait for William. William learned how to successfully build a windmill in very hard times. You would have to be incredibly smart to do that. He learned from books in the public library. He read, collected and built in his free time, (which he had much of since he had to drop out of school because he could not afford it). He read about how to make one certain part of a windmill, looked around for that thing or replaced it with something that would work just as well as the real thing, and then he would build it. He got so many items to help him build the windmill from looking in places like the back of a bar or a scrap yard, and he stored them all in his room. Sometimes he would get told off for a dirty and messy room, but it was worth it because in the end he actually built a windmill and helped his family.
There were two events that happened in the book that I found most interesting. The first thing that I found really interesting was that even though people thought William was losing his mind from the hunger while he was building his windmill, William never gave up. William kept on going through it, through all of it and never even thought about giving up. In the beginning of the book everyone thought William was just like them. Then they thought he was crazy, but they were wrong. He built a windmill. He never gave up. He stayed strong the whole way through. It shows that there can be more to a person than you think there is. Another very interesting thing that I read in the book was that he learned all he knew about windmills from books. He sat down day after day after day after day and he read and he read and he read and he read. I think it is very inspiring and makes me want to read more to see what I can learn from books.
I really enjoyed this book. One reason I enjoyed this book was it was a fun read and kept me on edge about what would happen next and if William would survive and if he would make a windmill or not. I would recommend this book to someone who likes autobiographies, nonfiction books, a little bit of sad concepts and someone who likes to read about other places in the world and what they are like. This book reminds me of the book I am Malala. She struggled and wanted to help other people in her home country and so did William. Overall, I would rate this book five stars out of five stars, (one meaning I didn’t like it all and five meaning I loved it and I want to read it again.)
I read The Mouse and The Motorcycle and that title made me think those two things don’t go well together, so I wondered what it could possibly be about. This book was by Beverly Cleary who used to be a bad reader until third grade when she caught up with everyone else. So what I don’t get is why she chose to be an author if she wasn’t such a good reader until third grade. This book is part of a series called Ralph and the Motorcycle. There is a mouse named Ralph and a boy named Keith in the story. The Mouse and The Motorcycle took place in a rundown hotel in California, but it does not say what the time period is but it is probably modern times.
