Rocket Boys: A Memoir (The Coalwood Series #1)

Rocket Boys: A Memoir (The Coalwood Series #1)

By Homer Hickam

2 ratings 1 review 2 followers
Interest LevelReading LevelReading A-ZATOSWord Count
Grades 9 - 12Grades 6 - 9n/a5.9129931
"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 company town where the only things that mattered were coal mining and high school football. But in 1957, after the Soviet satellite Sputnik shot across the Appalachian sky, Sonny and his teenaged friends decided to do their bit for the U.S. space race by building their own rockets—and Coalwood, Sonny and 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.

In a town where the only things that mattered were coal-mining and high-school football, where the future was regarded with more fear than hope, a young man watched the Soviet satellite Sputnik race across the West Virginia sky—and soon found his future in the stars. In 1957, Homer H. "Sonny" Hickam, Jr., and a handful of his friends were inspired to start designing and launching the home-made rockets that would change their lives and their town forever.

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. 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.

Rocket Boys has already caught the eye of Hollywood: The producer of Field of Dreams is now working to produce a major motion picture in time for next year's Academy Awards.

A uniquely endearing story 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.
Publisher: Perfection Learning
ISBN-13: 9781606865620
ISBN-10: 1606865625
Published on 1/1/2010
Binding: Hardcover
Number of pages: 368

Book Reviews (1)

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I rate it a 3 out of 5 because it wasn't really my type of story. I like books about fantasy and fiction, but I think that there were some parts in the book that I liked. I really liked the main character and how he is so ambitious. He became the leader and organized a team. They created and experimented with different rockets. But what I like the most in this story was how ambitious and independent the main character was. By talking to his dad and some workers he was able to get materials to create the rockets. He was also able to get a test ground and they even built their own hideout.