Energy Island

Energy Island

By Allan Drummond

Mr. Drummond wrote a beautiful tribute to the community of Samso in Denmark and their combined efforts the harness the wind to save energy.  Samso is an island in the middle of Denmark that had oil shipped over to them in large oil tankers and electricity sent to them from the mainland through underwater cables in the ocean.  The book beings reminding the reader that Samso is just an ordinary island, with ordinary people, and ordinary children and ordinary lives.  The island was incredibly windy, so an idea came to these ordinary folks about “harnessing the wind to change their world” and become energy independent.  Huge wind turbines were placed on the island and the energy became so abundant that the little island was able to send their excess to the mainland!!

This tribute is a tough picture book to read aloud.  It names the citizens of Samso that were instrumental in various ways on nearly every page.  The book becomes hard to read and the children can get lost in the process.  While I loved reading about the process and effort the small community had to go through, I found it a difficult book to share with third graders.