By William Kamkwamba, Bryan Mealer
The true story of a Malawian teenager who taught himself from library books and built a windmill to bring his village electricity during a famine.
William Kamkwamba grows up on a farm in Malawi, curious about how everything works, until a terrible drought brings famine and his family can barely eat one meal a day and he has to drop out of school because they can't pay the fees. Instead of giving up, he teaches himself science from books in a small library and, out of scrap metal, bicycle parts, and a broken bike frame, builds a windmill that makes electricity for his family's home. It's a longer narrative nonfiction told in his own voice, and it moves from real hardship into real, earned triumph.
It's the stretch at the top of the trail, the longest and most demanding read, and it rewards the effort. It shows a young person doing real science not as a hobby but to survive, which reframes what 'STEM' can mean for a class. It's unflinching about the famine, which gives the invention its weight, and yet the throughline is resourcefulness and hope. For a strong reader in the unit, it's the life that proves a trailblazer can be a child with a library card and a pile of scrap.