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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)

Explanation To Books Rocket Boys (Coalwood #1)

"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.

Describe Out Of Books Rocket Boys (Coalwood #1)

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

Rating Out Of Books Rocket Boys (Coalwood #1)

Ratings: 4.21 From 16153 Users | 1812 Reviews

Piece Out Of Books Rocket Boys (Coalwood #1)

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



A great story. I personally liked all of the information is spewed at me, much like in Dan Browns Da Vinci Code, except for this taught me about physics and rocket building instead of art history. Though I liked it for this reason even though physics isnt... my preferred science please know whether or not you like it in books because it may turn people away.What brought it down to four stars was that this book, along with many others written about or in this time period, had little character

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

a modern coming-of-age classicreview to come shortly.....

This book was not my favorite. This isnt my favorite genre of books anyways, but one of my best friends recommended it to me, so I though I would give it a try. The book is super long- about 430 pages! I ended up skimming a majority of it. There were some inappropriate parts, as well as a LOT of swearing- like several times per chapter. This man is incredible though! His story is so inspiring! Even though everyone in his town worked in the mines, he defied the odds to build rockets and other

A wonderful, coming of age story of Homer Hickam and his Big Creek Missile Agency friends. I found myself captivated by his experiences, point of view and the descriptive way he captured so many youthhood relationships, from his father to his beloved cat and so many others in between. This novel was both touching and relatable, a fantastic read.