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Rocket Boys (Coalwood #1)

Homer Hickam

Paperback | Pages: 384 pages

Rating: 4.21 | 16153 Users | 1812 Reviews

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Original Title:	Rocket Boys
ISBN:	0385333218 (ISBN13: 9780385333214)
Edition Language:	English
Series:	Coalwood #1
Setting:	West Virginia(United States)
Literary Awards:	National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for Biography/Autobiography (1998), Weatherford Award (1998), Alabama Author Award for Nonfiction (2001)

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"Until I began to build and launch rockets, I didn't know my home town was at war with itself over its children, and that my parents were locked in a kind of bloodless combat over how my brother and I would live our lives. I didn't know that if a girl broke your heart, another girl, virtuous at least in spirit, could mend it on the same night. And I didn't know that the enthalpy decrease in a converging passage could be transformed into jet kinetic energy if a divergent passage was added. The other boys discovered their own truths when we built our rockets, but those were mine."

So begins Homer "Sonny" Hickam Jr.'s extraordinary memoir of life in Coalwood, West Virginia - a hard-scrabble little mining company town where the only things that mattered were coal mining and high school football and where the future was regarded with more fear than hope.

Looking back after a distinguished NASA career, Hickam shares the story of his youth, taking readers into the life of the little mining town of Coalwood and the boys who would come to embody its dreams.

In 1957 a young man watched the Soviet satellite Sputnik shoot across the Appalachian sky and soon found his future in the stars. 'Sonny' and a handful of his friends, Roy Lee Cook, Sherman O'Dell and Quentin Wilson were inspired to start designing and launching the home-made rockets that would change their lives forever.

Step by step, with the help (and occasional hindrance) of a collection of unforgettable characters, the boys learn not only how to turn scrap into sophisticated rockets that fly miles into the sky, but how to sustain their dreams as they dared to imagine a life beyond its borders in a town that the postwar boom was passing by.

A powerful story of growing up and of getting out, of a mother's love and a father's fears, Homer Hickam's memoir Rocket Boys proves, like Angela's Ashes and Russell Baker's Growing Up before it, that the right storyteller and the right story can touch readers' hearts and enchant their souls.

A uniquely endearing book with universal themes of class, family, coming of age, and the thrill of discovery, Homer Hickam's Rocket Boys is evocative, vivid storytelling at its most magical.

In 1999, Rocket Boys was made into a Hollywood movie named October Sky starring Chris Cooper, Jake Gyllenhaal and Laura Dern. October Sky is an anagram of Rocket Boys. It is also used in a period radio broadcast describing Sputnik 1 as it crossed the 'October sky'. Homer Hickam stated that "Universal Studios marketing people got involved and they just had to change the title because, according to their research, women over thirty would never see a movie titled Rocket Boys" so Universal Pictures changed the title to be more inviting to a wider audience. The book was later re-released with the name October Sky in order to capitalize on interest in the movie.

Present Epithetical Books Rocket Boys (Coalwood #1)

Title	:	Rocket Boys (Coalwood #1)
Author	:	Homer Hickam
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Anniversary Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 384 pages
Published	:	January 11th 2000 by Delta (first published 1998)
Categories	:	Nonfiction. Autobiography. Memoir. Biography. Science. History

Rating Epithetical Books Rocket Boys (Coalwood #1)

Ratings: 4.21 From 16153 Users | 1812 Reviews

Article Epithetical Books Rocket Boys (Coalwood #1)

I'm probably a sucker for this book because I've had a challenging relationship with my father and because I've been passionate about space exploration for much of my life. If you've had one or both of these situations happen to you, this book and the movie upon which it was based (October Sky) will move you. Go forth and read.

Having recently read and enjoyed Carrying Albert Home: The Somewhat True Story of A Man, His Wife, and Her Alligator, I decided to go back and read the first book by West Virginia coal miners kid turned rocket scientist and best-selling author Homer Hickam. Rocket Boys, perhaps best known as the book that inspired the movie October Sky, is a heart-warming coming-of-age memoir about a group of boys who dreamt of the future in a town that had very little future to dream about. As is often the

During the eighties I was the store manager for Toys and Gifts Outlet in Oklahoma City. Loved that job! It was comprised of many elements I enjoy: creativity, organization, team-building, spatial aptitude, business mathematics, diversity, physicality and social interaction. Being a decade before the microchip exploded onto the scene in full force kids, and adults alike, still found joy in non-computerized toys and hobbies that required a bit of mentality, physicality, skill, and/or

When in Wales recently I finished reading October Sky by Homer H Hickam, which seemed to have a certain synchronicity for me at that moment in time. The book is set in Coalwood, West Virginia, a long way from Aberdare in the valleys of South Wales where I spent my earliest years and where its unmissable cemetery is the final resting place for generations of my ancestors. Mining was the lifeblood of both Coalwood and Aberdare, and my grandfather died from the same miners' lung disease that took

If there is one, just ONE thing that was monumentally historic in this book, a revealing glimpse into our culture's rich history and sociological mindset, it had nothing to do with rockets.DID ANYONE ELSE NOTICE, THAT FIFTY YEARS AGO, PEOPLE WERE HOOKING UP IN BAND BUSES!?Holy mother of french horns, it's ingrained in our history. I'm not talking to you, ex-cheerleaders belonging to the "'Twilight' fanclubs", you emo english lit majors arguing over poe. You couldn't understand. Only a certain

Such a wonderful story. I loved how in real life Homers dad championed his rocket building in his own way, unlike portrayed in the movie. And his Mom, what a courageous lady helping her son become a man. It was especially fun to read this book after being in the mountains that Homer loves. And visiting Marshall Space Center where he worked during his NASA years.