The Circuit by Francisco Jimenez

The undocumented immigrant experience is told in this graphic novel memoir by Francisco Jimenez. 

Under The Wire

Francisco Jimenez lived in a small village, El Rancho Blanco, located several miles north of Guadalajara, Mexico. His father often spoke about crossing "La Frontera" - the border between Mexico and the state of California. Life is difficult in their village. Francisco and his older brother, Roberto had to do chores at four in the morning, sleep on dirt floors and use candles. Finally one day Francisco and his family take the bus to Guadalujara and then a train to Mexicali. They crossed "under the wire" into the United States during the night and were picked up by a woman in a truck. She took them to Guadalupe, a small town on the coast of California where they could work picking strawberries. However, there was no work for Francisco's family for two weeks.

Soledad

In Bakersfield, Francisco is left in the family's old jalopy to care for his six month old brother, Trampita while Papa, Mama and Roberto work to pick cotton. Francisco is lonely and tries to learn how to pick cotton, risking his family's job and leaving Trampita crying.

Inside Out

In this chapter, Francisco and his older brother Roberto attend school while the family is living in Santa Maria. It is late January and the family has just finished picking cotton in Corcoran.  Francisco is enrolled in Miss Scalapino's Grade 1 class. He cannot understand English but Francisco loves doing art every afternoon. One of his drawings wins first prize.

Miracle in Tent City

Francisco's family moved to a tent city in rural Santa Maria that was owned by Sheehey Strawberry Farms. This was a farm-worker labour camp comprised mostly of single men who like the Jimenez family had crossed illegally into America. In the camp, Francisco's mother had a baby, Juan Manuel whom they named Torito because he was ten pounds! When Torito was two months old he became very ill with a high fever. The family prayed to the Virgen de Guadalupe. No remedies seems to work, not even a healer they brought it. Eventually Torito had to be taken to the hospital. He eventually recovered as the family continued to pray.

El Angel de Oro

Corcoran in the cotton season is always rainy but one year it was very rainy. Francisco met Miguelito who was two years older and living in the same camp. The walked to school together and Francisco looked forward to seeing him again. However, he never saw Miguel after that day. Instead, Francisco spend the days saving the fish from the overflowing creek next to the camp, who were suffocating in the mud.

Christmas Gift

It is December and Francisco's parents are preparing to leave Corcoran. He overhears his parents telling a couple with a baby that they cannot purchase the beautiful handkerchief the wife has embroidered.  His family, now consisting of Papa, Mama, Roberto, Trampito, Torito and baby Ruben, move to Visalia where they are offered a tent and work in the cotton fields. At Christmas, the children get bags of candy while Mama is given the beautiful embroidered handkerchief they purchased from the poor couple.

Death Forgiven

In this short story, Francisco's beloved red, green, and yellow parrot named El Perico suffers an untimely demise. El Perico was attached to a cat, Catalina, who belonged to another migrant couple. When they came to visit without Cataline, El Perico began squawking and Francisco's father hit the bird and killed it. Although Francisco was devastated he prayed for his father.

Cotton Sack

Francisco's family left Mr. Jacobson's vineyards in Fresno to move to the cotton fields of Corcoran. The family now has a daughter, Rorra. As his parents prepared cotton sacks for work, Francisco also wants to help pick but doesn't have a sack. As the family continues to look for more work picking cotton, Francisco is determined to prove to Papa that he deserves his own sack. But when he does pick cotton with its prickly leaves, his hand are injured and he realizes he's not ready yet.

The Circuit

After strawberry season is over in Santa Maria, they move again finding work in the vineyard of Mr. Sullivan. After grape season is over, Francisco can attend school so he enters Mr. Lema's sixth grade class. Mr. Lema becomes Francisco's best friend, helping his with his English during lunch hour. One day he offers to teach Francisco how to play trumpet but Francisco's joy is shortlived. When he arrives home, he sees the packed boxes and knows the family is readying to move once again.

Learning the Game

In this story, school ends for the summer for Francisco, but he also knows he won't be returning until November, after strawberry season in Santa Maria, grapes in Fresno and cotton picking in Corcoran. When Francisco accompanies a new worker, Gabriel to help a sharecropper who is ill, the contratista, Mr. Diaz treats the new worker badly. Gabriel refuses to be treated like an animal and stands up to him. Later on , Francisco stands up to Carlos who won't allow Manuelito to play "kick the can" with them. While Francisco succeeds, Gabriel is fired and sent back to Mexico.

To Have and To Hold
Francisco had a penny collection that included an 1865 Indian head penny and a 1910 Lincoln head penny. He was very proud of this collection especially since the 1910 penny was given to him by Papa. It was made the year his Papa was born and also the year of the revolution in Mexico. The 1865 penny had come from a friend, Carl, whom Francisco befriended in fifth grade in Corcorcan. Francisco also had a treasured notebook that he had found in the city dump in Santa Maria. He used the notebook to write down new words and their definitions, as well as math and grammar rules to be memorized. One day after picking grapes for Mr. Patrini in Orosi, Francisco arrived home to discover his penny collection gone. His four year old sister Rorra had used them for the gum machine in the store. Although he was angry, his mother's story about the value of people before money helped calm him. In the end, Francisco and his family lost everything due to a fire in their house. Later Francisco was able to put the losses in perspective.

Moving Still

In this final story, Roberto is the only one working, as Francisco's papa is laid up because of a bad back. Torito, Trampito, Rorra, Ruben and Francisco are in school. But the la migra, or Immigration Law Enforcement Agents sweep through the camps and work fields. Francisco's father shows la migra his green card. They decide to return to the Bonetti Ranch in Santa Maria, moving into the rundown barracks. Roberto entered grade ten at Santa Maria High, while Francisco was in the eighth grade at El Camino Junior High. Francisco excels in school and he and Roberto work hard to help their family. But eventually la migra catch up with them too.

Discussion

The Circuit is the first graphic novel adaptation of Francisco Jimenez's autobiographical series of books. He published four books: The Circuit, Breaking Through, Reaching Out and Taking Hold. Each document a specific part of his life.

Francisco Jimenez was born in Tlaquepague, Mexico in 1943. He lived in the small town of El Rancho Blanco in the state of Jalisco, Mexico until he was four years old. At this time his family entered the United States illegally and worked as migrant farm workers. Because they moved frequently, Francisco attended school sporadically until he and his family were deported back to Mexico when he was in grade eight. They returned to the United States legally a few months later, settling as farm workers at Bonetti Ranch. 

With his family now settled in one place, Francisco was able to complete his high school education. He attended Santa Clara University earning a B.A. in Spanish Studies in 1966. He attended Columbia University on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship earning both an Masters and Ph.D in Latin American Literature. Francisco became and American citizen in his junior year at Santa Clara and he also met his future wife, Laura Facchini there. Francisco taught first at Columbia University and then moved to Santa Clara University where he taught in the Department of Modern Languages and Literature until 2015.

His four books document the experience of migrant workers in America. In the graphic novel adaptation of The Circuit, Francisco Jimenez portrays the difficult life his family experienced as they worked as migrant farm labourers in California. They had left behind a life of poverty in Mexico with the belief that life in America would be economically much better. But because they were in the country illegally, poor living conditions, low wages and temporary work, and the threat of deportation were ever present.

The Circuit portrays many of the difficulties Francisco and his family faced as illegal migrant workers from the perspective of a child. In his Author's Note, Francisco writes, "It is based on my childhood experiences of growing up in a family of migrant farm workers. My intent in relating these experiences from the child's point of view is to have readers hear the child's voice, see through his eyes, and feel through his heart." This graphic novel accomplishes all of that and more in the form of thirteen short vignettes. 

 As a child of migrant farmers, Francisco struggled with the language barrier and inconsistent attendance at school. When Francisco attended school in grade one he couldn't understand his teacher because she was speaking in English. He received no help and resorted to daydreaming in order to quell his anxiety. Francisco writes "It was easier when Miss Scalapino read to the class from a book with illustrations. I would make up my own stories in Spanish, based on the pictures. Still, I wished I could understand what she was reading." It is not surprising therefore that he ended up repeating the grade. When he found a Spanish speaking friend at school, they were admonished for not speaking in English. Moves were frequent and could be sudden. For example, when Francisco's family were living in Corcoran, he began grade four but then left after three weeks when they moved to Visalia to find work. When he was older, Francisco was settling into grade six, eager to learn how to play the trumpet, only to find he must move yet again.

The graphic novel illustrates the poor living conditions endured by the migrant workers and their families: tents sometimes located near creeks that overflowed during the rainy season or near smelly dumps, abandoned or derelict wooden houses, and dilapidated garages. Francisco and his family often had to do repairs on the buildings they were given, to make them livable. While living in a tent city near Santa Maria, Francisco and his older brother, Roberto scavenged lumber from the dump to make a floor and fashion a cradle for the new baby. They would look for food in the trash behind the grocery stores so that Mama could make soup.

Despite all the hardships, Francisco and his family are a portrait of faith, perseverance, and ingenuity. When times were especially bad, Francisco and his family turned to prayer to sustain them. Francisco's mother is lovingly portrayed as the one person who was the foundation of their family, preparing delicious meals, and teaching forgiveness, love and generosity of spirit to Francisco and his siblings. They were hard-working, honest, and willing to help others, despite their extreme poverty. Like millions of Americans and Mexicans, they had dreams of a better life and willingly endured tremendous hardships in the attempt to achieve it. In his Author's Note, Francisco Jimenez writes, "I wrote The Circuit to record part of my family's history but also, and more important, to give readers an insight into the lives of migrant farmworker families from the past and the present whose hard and noble work of picking fruits and vegetables puts food on our tables. What sustains these families, toiling day after day, are their courage, faith, and hopes and dreams for a better life for their children and their children's children. Their story is an integral part of the American story." As Francisco states, he hopes The Circuit will help people understand immigrants and create empathy and respect for them.

The illustrations in the graphic memoir capture these facets of Francisco's story and make his story engaging and easy to follow. Illustrator Celia Jacobs used pen and ink on watercolor paper with digital colour. Additional artwork was painted with acrylic on paper.

Book Details:

The Circuit by Francisco Jimenez
New York: Clarion Books     2024
233 pp.

Reaching For the Moon: The Autobiography of NASA Mathematician Katherine Johnson

When Katherine Coleman was four-years-old she had a mission: to help her older brother Charlie with his math. Six-year-old Charlie was struggling to understand numbers, so Katherine decided to sit with him in class and help him! Charlie attended Mary McLeod Bethune Grade School where the Colored students of White Sulphur Springs were sent. His teacher, Mrs. Rosa Leftwich quickly realized that Katherine was indeed helping Charlie. Mrs. Leftwich eventually started a kindergarten class which Katherine attended and after that began school in the fall in second grade, a year ahead of Charlie. Katherine would eventually skip fifth grade. Her siblings, Horace and Margaret remained ahead of her in school. 

Before Katherine's family lived in White Sulphur Springs, her father owned a very large farm and log farmhouse in Oakhurst, which was located close by.  Their farm was called Dutch Run. Katherine's father had only a sixth-grade education but he was an industrious man. Katherine believes that a white man must have purchased the land their house in White Sulphur Springs was built on, as Colored people could  not buy land at that time. Education was very important to Katherine's father, which was why he moved the family into town.

In 1926, the Coleman family moved to Institute, West Virginia so the children could attend the West Virginia Colored Institute. When Katherine's father was unable to find employment he was forced to move back to White Sulphur Springs where he would live apart from his family for the next eight years, until all four Coleman children had graduated college. His family would visit during summers and holidays. 

Katherine entered high school at age ten and did well, often acing courses. During the 1920's Katherine and her siblings all worked at the Greenbrier Hotel, built at the local thermal springs. The hotel catered to wealthy white clients, although some amenities were available to the Colored population later in the evening. Horace, Charlie and Mr. Coleman worked as bellmen, while Margaret and Katherine worked in the valet shop, unpacking guest's trunks and pressing their clothes.

In 1932, Katherine graduated from high school and entered college. Because she had the opportunity to practice her French with the chef at the Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, Katherine thought she might like to major in French. However, Dr. William W. Schieffelin Claytor, head of the mathematics department urged her to reconsider. Katherine decided to major in both French and math. He also encouraged Katherine to become a research mathematician, and to that end he developed classes just for her, including a class about the geometry of outer space.

Katherine graduated from the Institute which was now called West Virginia State College, in 1937 with degrees in mathematics and French, summa cum laude. She graduated ahead of her brothers, Horace and Charlie, both of whom she thought were "slow learners". They were most definitely not!

Katherine then went on to teach math and music at Carnegie Elementary School in Marion, Virginia. Public schools at this time were racially segregated. "White Virginians thought that if Colored people became educated, they would challenge the existing social order, which was rooted in White supremacy - the belief that White people were genetically superior to non-White people, including Colored people." Marion, Virginia was predominantly white and Katherine knew that "the threat of violence was never far off." It was in Marion that Katherine met Jimmie Gobles, a tall graduate from Lincoln University in Missouri.  Katherine and Jimmie were married November 9, 1939.

Very soon after, during the summer of  1940, Katherine moved to Morgantown where she would begin graduate school at West Virginia University. Katherine was one of three Colored students chosen to integrate the school. However, Katherine didn't return to West Virginia University in the fall but instead returned to teaching with Jimmie at Carnegie Elementary. 

In December 1940, Katherine had the first of three daughters, named Joylette. Constance was born in April, 1943, and Katherine (Kathy) was born in April, 1944. Katherine and Jimmie moved to Bluefield, Virginia in 1947, where they both taught at Tazewell County  School. After losing their house in a fire, Katherine and Jimmie moved to the Newport News-Hampton Roads area. Katherine's sister Margaret and her husband had told Katherine about a secret government project on the Virginia peninsula where Colored women were working as "computers".  While Jimmie got a job as a painter at the Newport News shipyard, Katherine decided to try for a position as a mathematician at NACA (the forerunner of NASA). Eventually, Katherine was offered a job as a computer at NACA. It would be the beginning of a stellar career in the space industry, where she would have a profound impact on the Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle missions, and blaze a trail for women in science and engineering, especially African-American women.

Discussion

Reaching For The Moon is the inspiring story of Katherine Johnson, an African-American woman mathematician who led an extraordinary life. Johnson wrote her story in the hopes of inspiring young people to "reach for the moon in their own lives", no matter their circumstances. For Katherine Johnson, those circumstances were systemic discrimination based on race and gender.

As a young Black girl, growing up in racially segregated America during the 1920's and 1930's, Katherine experienced many serious challenges. Racial segregation and systemic racism meant fewer opportunities for African-Americans who struggled to obtain an education. When her father was born, about half of African Americans were unable to read. Katherine explains why White Americans were against educating Blacks and how the difficulty in obtaining an education made her father highly value an education.

Katherine writes how "...Colored people strove to educate themselves - organizing, creating self-help groups, running for office, fighting to change laws, founding schools, and so on."  Katherine's parents valued a good education so much they sacrificed to ensure their children were able to attend schools. Katherine notes of her father, "Because his own education had been prohibited, his children's was extremely important to him....Like many other Colored people of that era, he saw education as the pathway his children could follow to escape indignities and dangers, large and small." Repeatedly her father moved his family near good schools and even endured years of separation from his family, so that his daughters could receive a good education.

Katherine traces her own path through the years of the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. and the Space Race of the 1960's, set against the backdrop of the struggle by African-Americans for racial equality, desegregation, the right to vote, and the right to an education. She describes how schools for Black children were often deprived of funding, and the teachers poorly paid but how this situation also resulted in highly qualified teachers and well-educated Black students who went on to make significant contributions to America.

In Reaching For The Moon, Katherine describes the contributions she was most proud of at NACA and its successor, NASA. She attributes her success to her unprecedented habit of  asking questions of NASA engineers, so she could understand their thinking. This was to ensure her calculations were correct. It was something the other "computers" had never done, because it was expected that the women computers would not question the men engineers. "Having enough information to do my work accurately was essential; so I just ignored the social customs that told me to stay in my place. I would keep asking questions until I was satisfied with the results...Quietly the quality of my contribution began to outweigh the arbitrary laws of racial segregation and the dictates that held back my gender."

It is evident from Reaching For The Moon, that Katherine Johnson was a very gifted mathematician whose contributions were significant in both the Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. But she was also a woman of determination, perseverance and courage.  Her life was not without tragedy, as she lost her beloved first husband, Jimmie Gobles in 1956 when she was thirty-eight years old. Katherine passed away in February of 2020 at the age of one hundred and one.

In Reaching For The Moon, Katherine repeatedly mentions the advice her father gave her, "You are no better than anyone else, but nobody else is better than you." It was advice she would remember all her life, giving her the self-confidence in a world that saw her as unequal. Katherine Johnson's autobiography is a must-read for girls and teens of all backgrounds, but especially those from marginalized communities and those contemplating a career in science. 

Book Details:

Reaching For The Moon: The Autobiography of NASA Mathematician Katherine Johnson

New York: Atheneum Books For Young Readers   2019
248 pp.

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Brown Girl Dreaming is the story of Jacqueline Woodson's life growing up as an African American in America during the 1960s and 1970s. Woodson is an award-winning American author who has written many children's books.

In Part I "I am born", Woodson writes about her family history, on her father and mother's side. To aid her readers, Woodson provides family trees of her father Jack Woodson's family and her mother, Mary Ann Irby's family.

Woodson was born February 12, 1963 in Columbus, Ohio, into a nation in which the black civil rights movement was blossoming. The 1960s was a time of great change and agitation in the United States. The civil rights movement and the anti-war movement were just beginning to gain traction in 1963.

Her great-great-grandparents were slaves working the land. Although her parents, Jack and Mary were born free, in many ways they still did not have the freedoms that most white American's take for granted. And so, throughout America, African-Americans from all walks of life, led by Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and Rosa Parks are standing up for their civil rights, each in their own way.

Woodson writes that her father's family can be traced back to Thomas Woodson of Chillicothe, who was the first son of Thomas Jefferson and his black slave, Sally Hemings. Her paternal great-great-grandfather, William J. Woodson, born free in Ohio, fought in the Civil War for the Union. His son, William Woodson was sent to Nelsonville, Ohio to be educated in an all-white school. In a family of doctors and lawyers, Woodson's father Jack, earned a football scholarship to Ohio State University and settled in Columbus Ohio.

After her parents married, three children followed: a boy named Hope, a girl named Odella and then Jacqueline. Every year in the fall, Woodson's mother along with her children take the bus south to Woodson's mother's parents in South Carolina, leaving behind her father in Ohio Her father is determined to never return to the south because of the way African Americans are treated there. But in May of 1964, her father travels to South Carolina to reconcile with her mother and together the family return to Ohio. However, when Woodson is a year old, her mother decides to South Carolina for good, taking the children with her and leaving Woodson's father behind.

Part II "The stories of South Carolina run like rivers" focuses on Woodson's life in South Carolina at the home of her maternal grandparents, Gunnar and Georgiana Irby. Her grandfather Gunnar becomes "Daddy" to the three Woodson children,. He works as a foreman at a printing press while her grandmother teaches part-time and does what is called daywork which is cleaning the homes of white folk. In South Carolina, life is full of stories. Woodson with her sister Dell and her brother Hope sit on the porch stairs in the evening, listening to the women tell stories about relatives, the people in the daywork houses and neighbours. There is also her grandfather's garden, the smell of wood burning in the pot-bellied stove in autumn and fire flies in mason jars.

Woodson's mother leaves for New York City but returns before the summer with a plan to eventually move her family there. Woodson and her siblings find themselves pulled into their grandmother's faith as a Jehovah Witness, attending meetings at the local Kingdom Hall and going out to neighbours to share their faith. Woodson's mother returns to New York City but the following year she is back in Greenville, bringing a new baby brother, Roman. They move to New York City to start a new life.

Part III "Followed the sky's mirrored constellation to Freedom" describes Woodson's move to New York city. Woodson along with her mother, brother Hope and sister Odella and the new baby Roman, move to Herzl Street where her Aunt Kay and Bernie live. They then move to a house on Madison Avenue. For Woodson, New York is much different and she missed
"the collards growing
down south, the melons, fresh picked
and dripping with a sweetness New York
can never know."
But Woodson loves her school with its warm wood trim but life in New York takes some getting used to. Tragedy strikes when her half-brother Roman eats paint off the walls and becomes sick from lead poisoning. When the family returns to Greenville for the summer, Roman has to stay behind in the hospital to recover.

Part IV "Deep in my heart, I do believe" is a collection of poems about Woodson's life in New York City. By this time, Woodson is beginning to adjust to life in the big city. She has a good friend, Maria with whom she shares her lunches. She is considered family by Maria who invites her to her brother Carlos' baptism. Her beloved Uncle Robert is sent to jail on Rikers Island. It is during this time that Woodson begins to write - small poems which she finds are easier to express herself . 

Part V "Ready to change the world" touches on the tumultuous times of the late 1960s and Woodson's experiences in school during this era. She found her calling gradually, her voice, and her place as a writer.

Discussion

Brown Girl Dreaming is about a young African American girl's journey to finding her place in a  changing America. Woodson takes young readers through her own journey by first setting the stage of the America her family came from; black Americans, one side freeborn, the other side only two generations from slavery. The Civil War victory for the Union was supposed to given African Americans their freedom but in the south things have been slow to change. It is this situation that seems to divide Woodson's parents. Her mother's love of Nicholtown in Greenville, South Carolina draws her back to the south. Her father on the other hand, is determined to leave the south,

 "You can keep your South,...
The way they treated us down there,
I got your mama out as quick as I could.
Brought her right up here to Ohio."

Woodson describes growing up in a loving family, her early years wrapped in the love of her beloved grandfather Gunnar and her grandmother.  As her mother moves her family from Greenville to various locations in New York City, Woodson is shaped by the events happening throughout the nation; the marchers in the south, Angela Davis and the Black Panther movement in California, and the Vietnam War.

Jacqueline Woodson gradually discovers that words hold a special meaning for her and that she wants to be a writer. Her storytelling begins with her own stories that she tells, which her Uncle Robert enjoys and encourages, but which her mother accuses her of lying, warning her that she will one day steal.
"I won't steal.
It's hard to understand how one leads to the other,
how stories could ever
make us criminals."

Storytelling is easier at first for Woodson as she explains in the poem, "writing #1"
"It's easier to make up stories
than it is to write them down. When I speak,
the words come pouring out of me. The story
wakes up and walks all over the room...."

In the poem "birch tree poem" Woodson captures what poetry and words mean to her, how poems open her imagination in a way that brings tears to her eyes. When she tells her family that she wants to be a writer, they acknowledge her love of writing and its benefits as a hobby, but suggest she should consider something else...a teacher, a lawyer.

When Woodson's quiet, older brother Hope shocks everyone including his family with his wonderful voice at a school concert, she wonders,
"Maybe, I am thinking, there is something hidden
like this, in all of us. A small gift from the universe
waiting to be discovered."

Woodson love of stories is shown when she memorizes the story of the Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde and recites it to her classmates, enthralling them,
"But I just shrug, not knowing what to say.
How can I explain to anyone that stories
are like air to me,
I breathe them in and let them out
over and over again."
After this she knows that "Words are my brilliance."

After this she writes a book of poems about butterflies, and another time whispers a song she thinks up on the bus to Dannemora to visit her Uncle Robert. Her sister believes it's "too good" to have been thought up by Jacqueline. But she's now beginning to find where she belongs, what her "small gift" might be.

Brown Girl Dreaming is about finding your own niche, learning to accept yourself and finding that hidden "small gift" that everyone has. It's about believing in yourself and having the courage to follow where your "small gift" might lead you! For Woodson, words are her gift, everlasting,

"...on paper, things can live forever 
On paper, a butterfly
never dies."

Well-written, Brown Girl Dreaming captures the essence of coming of age as an African-American in America during the 1960s and 70s.

Book Details:

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
New York: Puffin Books     2016
348 pp.

The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer

The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind is a picture book about teen inventor, William Kamkwamba whose determination to help his starving family made a huge difference to his village in Africa.

William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi on August 5, 1987. He lived near the village of Wimbe with his parents and six sisters. William was curious about how things worked and dreamed about taking apart things and figuring out how they worked.

William worked in the fields with his family. His father was a farmer who grew maize. Then one year the rains did not come and drought spread across Malawi. People began to starve, including William's family.  His father rationed their food with the family eating only one meal per day. Without crops, Williams family began to run out of money and he was no longer able to attend school. This upset William because he enjoyed learning.

Then he remembered the library that had been started by the Americans. William began visiting the library and reading books about science. These books explained to him how engines worked. Because he could not read English, William had to use a dictionary to read the books. It was a picture of a windmill which was described as a means to produce electricity and pump water that intrigued William the most. He knew immediately that he wanted to build a windmill for his family's farm so they could have electricity to light their homes at night and pump water from the ground for his father's crops.

William set out to build a windmill, searching for the materials he needed at a local junk yard. His determination and efforts, which were successful, would change not only his family's life, but his own and that of his village forever.

Discussion

The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind is a picture book that tells the basic story of William Kamkwamba's life and his astonishing feat of building a windmill for his father's farm. His story is so remarkable that readers will also want to learn more in by reading the adult version of his autobiography with the same title.

In the adult version, William writes that before he discovered science, the belief in magic dominated the world he lived in. William's parents started out their married life in Dowa, a small town southeast of Masitala. In Dowa his father Trywell worked as a traveling trader. When William was a year old, his Uncle John came to Dowa to convince his father to move to his village of Misitala to farm. He felt his brother could make more money and better support his family. Trywell agreed and the family moved to the village, first living in a one room house near Uncle John. Eventually, William's uncle gave the family a one acre plot to grow tobacco to sell and maize and vegetables to eat.

William's father and his Uncle John built up a good business farming tobacco as well as operating maize mills in nearby villages. When John tied from tuberculosis, the business was taken over by his son Jeremiah. However, poor management resulted in the business collapsing, meaning William's family was on its own.

When William was thirteen, he and his friend Geoffrey began taking apart radios to learn how they worked. At this time William's father was farming mostly maize, a food eaten at every meal in Malawi, in the form of a porridge calls nsima. William stresses that maize was the most important fod staple in Malawi. Anything that might interfere with the production of maize in the country would be catastrophic.

In December of 2000, the rains were late and then too heavy, causing serious flooding. This was followed by drought, resulting in very small yields of maize. William's father's farm yielded only five sacks of maize. It was during this time that a friend of his father visited their farm, riding a bicycle with a lamp powered by a dynamo. William was determined to understand how it worked. His experiments with the bike soon helped him to learn about electricity. In Malawi, only two percent of the population had electricity meaning that life and work stopped when it became dark. Eventually William would return to the idea of electricity and how it might help his family.

Famine, cholera and malaria followed the drought in 2001 in which William's family and his country starved. The descriptions of how the famine affected William and his family are distressing and heartbreaking. William also explains how the drought was enhanced by the deforestation of Malawi due to the tobacco farms. Because of the crop failure William had been unable to return to school. When the country recovered, he never returned. At first he tried to occupy his mind playing chess and bawo but this didn't work. He remembered that the Malawi Teacher Training Activity had opened a small library in Wimbe Primary School, stocked with books donated by the American government. William began taking out books from the library and borrowing the notes of his friend, Gilbert who was attending school. With the help of a teacher Mrs. Edith Sikelo from Wimbe Primary School who was also the librarian, William began to understand many basic concepts in physics such as magnetism, electromagnetic induction.

William writes in his adult version of his autobiography, "I can't tell you how exciting I though this was. Even if the words sometimes confused me, the concepts that were illustrated in the drawing were clear and real in my mind." It is important to remember that these books were written in English and that William had to use an English-Chichewa dictionary. But it was an American textbook, Using Energy that was to change William's life forever. It was pictures of windmills and the explanation of how energy can be converted from one form to another that made William realize a windmill was what his father's farm needed to generate electricity.

William's remarkable story, well told in the simple and less detailed picture book version captures all of the tenacity, ingenuity, determination and intelligence William exhibited to overcome many obstacles. The story is also well told  by the oil paint and cut paper artwork of illustrator Elizabeth Zunon, a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design. This picture book lends itself well to homeschoolers and students wishing to study about sustainable development in the developing world, the role of education in Africa and the power of libraries. Older readers who wish to learn more about the backstory to William's success are encouraged to read his autobiography by the same title.It too is well written and well worth reading.

You can learn more about William at his website, www.williamkamkwamba.com


Book Details:

The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer
New York: Dial Books For Young Readers         2012

My Brief History by Stephen Hawking

My Brief History is just that - a very short autobiography of Stephen Hawking's remarkable life from his childhood in postwar London to his ground-breaking work in cosmology and quantum physics. It is a succinct, engaging story that begins in 1942.

Stephen Hawking was born in 1942 in Oxford, England. Hawking had three siblings, Mary, Philippa and an adopted brother, Edward, who passed away in early adulthood. Because the school he attended as a child did not believe in formally instructing children to read, Stephen did not learn to read until he was eight years old. 

When he was a young boy, Stephen loved model trains but did not have a good working one until after the war when his father returned from a visit to America with a new train. Stephen was interested in electric trains and with his friend, John McClenahan and later on with another school friend, Roger Ferneyhough, he built different working models of trains, boats, planes and games. Hawking writes that he had "an urge to know how systems work and how to control them."  Later on this urge to understand would be satisfied by his endeavours in theoretical physics.

When Hawking attended St. Albans school, he was an average student. Stephen had a group of six or seven friends with whom he would discuss many topics, including "the origin of the universe and whether it had required a God to create it and set it going." Stephen wanted to study mathematics and physics but his father, fearing there would be no jobs for mathematicians, wanted him to study medicine. To Stephen, "Physics was always the most boring subject at school because it was so easy and obvious. Chemistry was more fun because unexpected things, such as explosions, kept happening. But physics and astronomy offered the hope of understanding where we came from and why we are here."

In March, 1959, Hawking went to Oxford to write the scholarship exam and was admitted at age seventeen. At the time Hawking attended college, most were single-sex and responsible for protecting the morals of the students. Being caught in bed with a member of the opposite sex meant automatic expulsion from the college. The attitude in colleges at this time was to do as little work as possible, which Stephen Hawking managed to accomplish. He graduated Oxford and went to Cambridge. But before arriving at Cambridge Hawking journeyed to Iran with a fellow student, John Elder, who spoke Farsi. During this trip, Stephen travelled to Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz and Persepolis.

In 1962, Cambridge beckoned. There Stephen was to be supervised by Dennis Sciama. Although he originally wanted to study with the renowned astronomer Fred Hoyle, it turned out that the assignment of Sciama was a fortuitous one. Sciama had more time to devote to the young cosmologist. Hawking decided to study in the neglected areas of cosmology and gravitation. 

During Hawking's last year at Oxford he noticed that he was becoming increasingly clumsy and when this trend continued during his time at Cambridge he decided to see his doctor. Tests were ordered and it was eventually concluded that Hawking had motor neuron disease and that he had two years to live. Although this was depressing as doctors could do nothing to help him, Hawking continued to struggle on with his thesis work and even began to enjoy life. He also began to work hard at his studies and found he enjoyed this very much. He also fell in love and this greatly helped his outlook on life. He married Jane Wilde in 1965.  Two years later they had their first child, Robert and then three years later, Lucy was born.

When Hawking began his graduate studies in 1963, the principal question in cosmology was whether the universe had a beginning. The Big Bang theory and the steady-state theory were two possible origins. Around this time, Roger Penrose had done some ground-breaking work on black holes and singularities. When a star dies it contacts in on itself and there is a point where time and space come to an end - known as a singularity. Hawking decided to apply this to formation of the universe and this became his thesis topic and led into his life's work. Hawking "has shown how quantum theory can predict what happens at the beginning and end of time"

From this point on Hawking provides short chapters on his work on black holes and time travel as well as writing his most popular work, A Brief History of Time.  Hawking writes, "I was sure that nearly everyone is interested in how the universe operates, but most people cannot follow mathematical equations. I don't care much for equations myself...mainly because I don't have an intuitive feeling for equations. Instead, I think in pictorial terms, and my aim in the book was to describe these mental images in words..." The book became a huge hit in both America and Britain where it remained on the best seller lists for months. Hawking has also written many other books that explain the science of black holes and the universe.

My Brief History is a great read for those who are fans of Stephen Hawking and those who would like to know more about this famous physicist whose life was the focus of the bio-pic The Theory of Everything. Hawking devotes more time talking about specific aspects of his work like black holes and time travel.

There are lots of black and white photographs of Hawking during his lifetime, featuring his family, his first wife Jane, and his second wife, Elaine, his life as a student and even his recent travels and his experiencing zero gravity. Despite his severe disability, Hawking is a well travelled man, having visited many countries. He is probably the most famous scientist in the world partly because of his disability and partly because his work in theoretical physics has made black holes, time travel and quantum theory sexy.

The last chapter of the book is probably the most enlightening. Although Hawking initially felt he had been dealt a low blow, he remains satisfied with his life, having had two marriages, "three beautiful and accomplished children" and having been successful in his scientific career. Instead of hindering him, his disability has allowed him to focus solely on the theoretical aspect of his career and not having had to lecture. "I have had a full and satisfying life. I believe that disabled people should concentrate on things that their handicap doesn't prevent them from doing and not regret those they can't do." Ultimately, isn't that the point of it all - a life well lived with the satisfaction that perhaps he has "added something to our understanding of the universe."

Book Details:
My Brief History by Stephen Hawking
New York: Bantam Books      2013
127 pp.