The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind Summary

What would you do if you weren 't able to go to school and had to work for your father in the fields? That is what William Kamkwamba had to face. William is the author of The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind which tells the true story of his life in Malawi, and how he built a windmill to bring electricity to his village. William lived in a small farming village where they struggled through seasons with no food because of famine and drought. William couldn’t go to school because his family did not have the money. William decided to go to the local library to teach himself and to keep up with his classmates. That is where he discovered the windmill. He decided to build one to help put light in his family 's house, and he also wanted it to power a water pump to bring water to the fields for the plants. The book tells the story of the struggles and hard work he went through to build a successful windmill and his other inventions. William could not have built his inventions without his effective habits of determination, perseverance, and looking for alternatives.

William demonstrated determination throughout the book because he didn 't stop. He kept on trying to fix his mistakes. One way that William demonstrated that was when he broke his father 's radio. He broke the radio as he looked for another way to prove that the windmill was working. He also broke his bicycle chain while testing the windmill. He looked for another chain to use that was stronger. The last way that he demonstrated determination was that people didn 't believe him, and he ignored them. People kept on calling him crazy because he would be in the dump all day but he ignored them, and kept building his windmill. When William’s windmill started to work, and the crowd was surprised William said “I told you I wasn 't mad.” (Kamkwamba 201) William didn 't just demonstrate determination; he also demonstrated