October Sky
by Homer H. Hickam
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Book Summary Information
Author: Homer H. HickamEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-02
ISBN: 0780799984
Publisher: Perfection Learning
Book Reviews of October Sky
Book Review: October Sky: A Review
Summary: 4 Stars
October Sky is the story of a small town boy with big ambitions. Homer Hickam Hickam grows up in Coalwood, West Virginia, a small mining town where there is not much enthusiasm about scientific pursuits. Homer is inspired when he sees the Russian Sputnik sail across the sky one night and acquires an interest and passion in rocketry. Eventually he overcomes numerous obstacles imposed by the town and his family and, with the help and support of his high school teacher, Ms. Riley, and German scientist Wernher von Braun, Homer wins the science fair. Later on in life, Homer decided to write about his scientific pursuits and accomplishments in order to send a message to his readers that no matter what kind of obsctacles are encountered, with passion, patience, and persistance, they can be overcome. I encourage people to read this book because it is not only interesting, but also inspirational. It combines a first-person narrative of the small town life in the late 1950s with some interesting facts about rockets and a story about one boy who went against all odds and achieved greatness.
Summary of October Sky
The true story, originally published as Rocket Boys, that inspired the Universal Pictures film.It was 1957, the year Sputnik raced across the Appalachian sky, and the small town of Coalwood, West Virginia, was slowly dying.
Faced with an uncertain future, Homer Hickam nurtured a dream: to send rockets into outer space. The introspective son of the mine?s superintendent and a mother determined to get him out of Coalwood forever, Homer fell in with a group of misfits who learned not only how to turn scraps of metal into sophisticated rockets but how to sustain their hope in a town that swallowed its men alive.
As the boys began to light up the tarry skies with their flaming projectiles and dreams of glory, Coalwood, and the Hickams, would never be the same.
Inspired by Werner von Braun and his Cape Canaveral team, 14-year-old Homer Hickam decided in 1957 to build his own rockets. They were his ticket out of Coalwood, West Virginia, a mining town that everyone knew was dying--everyone except Sonny's father, the mine superintendent and a company man so dedicated that his family rarely saw him. Hickam's smart, iconoclastic mother wanted her son to become something more than a miner and, along with a female science teacher, encouraged the efforts of his grandiosely named Big Creek Missile Agency. He grew up to be a NASA engineer and his memoir of the bumpy ride toward a gold medal at the National Science Fair in 1960--an unprecedented honor for a miner's kid--is rich in humor as well as warm sentiment. Hickam vividly evokes a world of close communal ties in which a storekeeper who sold him saltpeter warned, "Listen, rocket boy. This stuff can blow you to kingdom come." Hickam is candid about the deep disagreements and tensions in his parents' marriage, even as he movingly depicts their quiet loyalty to each other. The portrait of his ultimately successful campaign to win his aloof father's respect is equally affecting. --Wendy Smith
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