The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

My family loves to give and receive books for Christmas. Brian added a real gem to my book collection this year: William Kamkwamba’s memoir, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.

Kamkwamba tells magical stories of his childhood, his family and his life in Malawi.  For a young man he paints vivid and insightful pictures of the politics, cultural superstitions and extreme poverty and famine that engulfed his people.

While I enjoyed the education of this book, what it really delivers is inspiration and hope. William dreams of bringing a better a life to his family and he makes it happen. He takes his natural gifts of curiousity and science exploration and turns them into something literally electrifying. William’s story is a great one. I feel fortunate that it was discovered and shared.

I’m encouraging Ben, who is 12, to read The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.  It’s message is so relevant for him. We should all take our “crazy” ideas and just give ’em a try. Trust in ourselves and each other and great things can happen.

Nice pick, Brian!

This entry was posted on Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 9:36 pm and is filed under Book Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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