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Summary: A Great Book For Everybody
Review: This book is a great book for anybody and everybody. The story Homer Hickam tells is both profound and entertaining. As your reading along you get so engrossed in the drama that you tend to forget it is a nonfiction story. Or rather it seems to be one of those great fiction stories that almost seem real. It is a great buy and I highly recommend it.
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Summary: Inspiring Book
Review: After seeing the movie I had to read the book. It's great! Drive and determination to succeed, as demonstrated and chronicled by Hickham, is a rare and wonderful thing. A great read for all.
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Summary: Old fashioned values in a cynical time
Review: I came to this book via the film and I enjoyed both immensely. I liked the honesty of the relationship with his father and the absolute need to take his own path. It is full of terrific stories and creates a tremendous picture of life in a Coal town, when a young man wants to break the mould of football hero and charts his own course as a rocket scientist.
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Summary: Doing The Impossible
Review: Doing The Impossible
This book is a biography of Homer H. Hickam the author of the book. The book talks about his childhood or a least part of it. The book is written in novel form. Homer lives in Coalwood West Virginia. It is a small coal-mining town. Homer and his friends Quentin, Roy Lee, O'Dell, Sherman and Billy decide to build rockets.
What inspires them is the Russian satellite Sputnik flies over the United States and ignites the spark that sets them flying. They start their own organization the BCMA. They each have their own jobs in the organization. Quentin is the scientist because he's smart. Roy Lee is transportation because he has a car. O'Dell are in charge of supplies because O'Dell's dad is a garbage man. Sherman lights the fuse because he can run fast. Billy watches the sky for the rockets to see when they fall. Homer is in charge of everything and helps everyone but especially Quentin because it was his idea.
They start out with primitive fuel for their rockets and only succeed in blowing up homer's mothers fence. But eventually they get their own range to fly their rockets called Cape Coalwood.
They get very efficient fuel and get their rockets to go a mile or so. To achieve this they learn sophisticated math and take advanced math courses. Also Miss Reilly their science teacher orders them a book. After all the success of the rockets and some helpful encouragement from their science teacher they enter the county science fair and win. It was the first time Coalwood ever won. They then go on to the national Science Fair and do well there.
Homers father is in charge of the mine and he spends almost all of his time there. His father also has to lay a lot of people off and it causes a lot of problems. During all this other things are happening in Coalwood. Homers parents are having some disagreements. Also, a man that was a friend of Homer's dies in the mine when his father gets hurt. Homer and his father don't get along very well, and there are many times that they argue during the book. Homer also falls in love with the most popular girl. To tell any more of the plot would give away the story. There are some parts that are not in my story that can only be found by reading this book.
My favorite part of the book is when John F. Kennedy is doing a speech and calls on Homer for a question. Homer asks him what he thinks about going to the moon. Kennedy responds, "Some people think I should go to the moon." He also goes on to say that he has considered a program to go there. I like it because its funny and amazing that it actually happened.
This book would appeal to boys and girls young or old. Most likely teens would want to read this. I loved this book. It was full of dreams, inspiration, and triumph despite what people think of you. And it proves that some people can achieve the impossible when no one believed they could.
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Summary: A "Must Read" Especially for Teens
Review: This book is a rare-find and I recommend The Rocket Boys to all of my teenage friends. It's easy to read, inspiring and is a great way to bring recent history to life.Most of us turn into zombies whenever we hear academics talking about the Cold War, the ensuing arms race and the politics behind space travel, even though we know it's important for us to understand such things. Mr. Hickam paints an accurate picture of what rural America was thinking when the Soviets shocked the world with Sputnik and how the nation reacted to JFK -- the first Catholic to run for president of the United States. But the history lesson is merely a byproduct of a greater message. It's a compelling story of a young man who was unafraid to chase his dreams. Young Homer didn't just dream big, he developed a plan for building a rocket, he studied and he kept trying even after he failed. Sounds like a cross between Disney and the History Channel -- but it's not nearly that trite a formula. These characters are rich, because they're real and because Mr. Hickam is a talented writer who remembers and embraces his past and the people who shaped his life. This book is a thousand times more inspiring than the movie inspired by "The Rocket Boys."
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Summary: A Wonderful, Heartwarming Story
Review: This book is a delightful true story of a group of young boys who fulfill their dreams. It is much more than a story of a group of rocket builders, though. It is a story of youth, of growing up, and coming of age. Hickam does a spectacular job of not simply listing what happened when he and his friends were inspired to build a rocket, but showing the reader how they felt, and what they went through to get their goal. Hickam does not stop at just the story of the rockets, however. He goes much deeper, into his love life, his home life, and his school life. The reader can feel Hickam's pain when he is turned down repeatedly by the girl of his dreams, and also when his parents fight, especially when it is about him.
The other thing that Hickam does exceptionally well at is describing the place where he grew up in. This little town of Coalwood in West Virginia comes to life to those who read this book. The reader comes to see how everything revolves around the coal mines, and how without coal, there would be no town. They see how gossip spreads quickly in a town with little for entertainment, and how the head of the mine holds the real power in the town of Coalwood. Hickam shows all of this, while not becoming longwinded. More importantly though, he gets the reader caught up in the story. When reading this book, I could not put it down, for I needed to see how Homer made it, how he came through it all, and reached his mountain of glory. This is truly a great American story, and anyone can see why it was chosen to become a movie, for Hickam's childhood seems as if it were written in Hollywood.
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Summary: excellent book
Review: i had to read this book for a class, and it was a great book. it's one that i'm actually glad my teacher made me read. i would reccomend it to just about anybody. it was a touching and inspiring story, even if parts of it were fictionalized. it was written a nonfiction novel, but reads like a fiction which makes it even better. if you haven't watched the movie, read the book first, so all the things in the movie that are wrong can bother you too! i watched the movie after reading it and all the things that were wrong really really bugged me... (ex: John Hickam instead of Homer Hicham??) but overall it was a really great read, so what are you waiting for?? read it!
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Summary: A Grand Adventure, a great read, a magnificent story
Review: Homer Hickam (Jr.) has written a book that is bound to be considered a literary classic. It is much, much more than a memoir. I heard Homer speak at the Southern Kentucky Book Fair and he said all his "memoirs" were Novel-Memoirs, memoirs written in the form of novels. He said, however, that he was able to recall small events pretty exactly by his father's mine diary, a daily recitation of what happened in the mine, the weather, and occasional references to what was going on at home. And yes, the meeting with John Kennedy really did happen. It is even recorded in the new biography of JFK titled "Jack." Although Homer said he does not take responsibility for the moon program. Vastly superior to the still-wonderful movie, Rocket Boys/October Sky gets my vote for the best memoir ever and not far behind in one of the best novels ever written, too. By the way, I teach it in my high school English class. My kids love it. Their parents do, too. Next year, I'm going to also teach The Coalwood Way and Sky of Stone as well. Homer said also that no real person in any of his memoirs has ever come to him and said "That's not the way it happened." He pretty much got it right but, of course, used the techniques of fiction to make his true story even truer to the events he covers. Keep writing, Homer, and we'll keep reading.
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Summary: This is an excellent - but somewhat fictionalized -- story.
Review: Hickam himself hints in a note at the beginning that he took creative liberties in writing the book. However, I think those liberties went beyond the level he implies. Example: On a particular day when he was 17, a certain girl at school wore a particular outfit. That evening, Homer ate a particular meal; worked a particular homework problem; had a particular conversation with his Mom; the next day, a different girl wore a different particular outfit; and it goes on and on, with Hickam recalling the most minute details of virtually every day of his high school years. I don't think anyone has such a detailed, day-by-day, minute-by-minute memory of things that happened 30 or 40 years ago. Also, do you really believe that Quentin came up with the ideas for both Velcro and pantyhose? Why, if only his friends hadn't changed the subject, he might have invented half the stuff we use today! And did Homer really plant the seed for JFK's land-a-man-on-the-moon-before-the-end-of-the-decade speech?Don't get me wrong -- it's a great book, and I'm sure it's MOSTLY a true story; you just have to realize it's a novelized true story, perhaps rearranged so as to maximize dramatic (and sometimes comedic) effect. Just take the details with a grain of salt, and enjoy the read.
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Summary: Awesome!!
Review: This book was just the best. I finished it in 3 days. I read the book after i watched the movie. One thing that i found was that the book was way way better than the movie. The movie was not bad either but the book gave you a lot of details and iam a big sucker for details. It also had a lot of other stuff that the movie missed. I would recommend this book to any teenager or anybody who is just looking for some good fun.
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