Wind Energy for Kids (Wind Energie Kinderleicht) is a little book for little people by Thomas Simons. The 27-page booklet is 6 inches by 6 inches, but richly illustrated with simple themes about wind energy. The themes and their illustrations are ideal for parents to read to their children.
I haven’t followed the growth of the industry for several years now, so some of the information and comparisons were new to me. For example, based on data from 2019, Simons writes that there 90,000 wind turbines on land in Europe; 30,000 of which are in Germany. He explains that’s as many wind turbines as grains of rice in a three kilo or 6.6 pound bag of rice. That was news to me. I’d never thought of it that way before. Maybe I need to read children’s books more often. . .
Further, Simons notes that there are 5,500 wind turbines at sea with another 2,750 more coming. The three countries leading in offshore wind energy are Great Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands. Because of their much bigger size, each offshore wind turbine produces as much as five wind turbines on land.
Offshore wind turbines are so big that they are taller than the Cologne cathedral or the London Eye, London’s giant Ferris wheel.
For perspective, Simons notes that the nacelle of each of these wind turbines weighs as much as 16 elephants, and the blades are longer than a soccer pitch (105 meters or 344 feet), the latter is a common unit of measurement for Europeans.
Simons little book doesn’t shy away from the “elephant in the room” the role of wind energy in society. “Some people think that wind turbines make our landscapes look ugly,” he writes. Then follows that with “Others are happy at every wind turbine they see for all the electricity that wind power produces.”
He explains that the booklet is designed for children age 4 or more as well as for first-time readers. Simons works with wind energy for the German government and is the father of two curious girls for which the booklets were written.
Anyone working with wind energy should have a copy for their own children.
The original version of Simons’ booklet was published in German as Wind Energie Kinderleicht. There are also Dutch, Polish, and Danish translation. Simons has also published Windenergie kinderspel in a similar format with Spica Verlag.
Each booklet is 4.99 €, plus tax from Spica Verlag GmbH, Liepser Weg 8, DE 17237, Blumenholz (Germany) and can be ordered online.
While I haven’t written much about children’s books on wind energy, I have commented on one I found when working in Toronto. See Wind Power: 20 Projects to Make with Paper-a Review.
And I provided assistance to Gretchen Woelfle on the first edition of her The Wind at Work: An Activity Guide to Windmills, a Children’s literature top choice in 1998.
My library contains a few other children’s books as well as whimsical books on whirligigs that I haven’t written about. Of course, after four decades of modern wind energy there are dozens of titles for children in a host of languages.
- Crépeau, Pierre. Playing with the Wind: The Whirligig Collection of the Canadian Museum of Civilization. The Museum, 1991.
- Crépeau, Pierre, and Pauline Portelance. Pointing at the Wind: The Weather-Vane Collection of the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1990. https://bac-lac.on.worldcat.org/oclc/77110344.
- Dobson, Clive. Wind Power: 20 Projects to Make with Paper. Firefly Books, 2010. https://archive.org/details/windpower20proje00dobs.
- Dorros, Arthur. Feel the Wind. HarperCollins, 1989. https://arthurdorros.com/books/feel-the-wind/.
- Gipe, Paul. “Wind Power: 20 Projects to Make with Paper–a Review.” Book Reviews. WIND WORKS, August 15, 2011. https://wind-works.org/wind-power-20-projects-to-make-with-paper-a-review/.
- Lafferty, Peter. Wind to Flight. Franklin Watts Ltd, 1989.
- Lunde, Anders S. Whirligigs in Silhouette. Modern Handcraft, 1989.
- Santrey, Laurence. What Makes the Wind. With Bert Dodson. Troll Communications Llc, 1982. https://archive.org/details/whatmakeswind00sant_3yn.
- Simons, Thomas. Wind Energy for Kids. Spica Verlag, 2022. https://spica-verlag.de/produkt/windenergie-kinderleicht/.
- Simons, Thomas. Windenergie kinderleicht. Spica Verlag, 2020. https://spica-verlag.de/produkt/windenergie-kinderleicht/.
- Woelfle, Gretchen. The Wind at Work: An Activity Guide to Windmills. Second. Chicago Review Press, 2013. https://www.gretchenwoelfle.com/the_wind_at_work__an_activity_guide_to_windmills_2996.htm.
