Rating: 
Summary: The Movie Was Great...The Book Is Better!
Review: If you liked the movie, you'll love the book! It is a book you won't want to put down and you don't want it to end. That's why I have just ordered Homer's "The Coalwood Way", and I can hardly wait to get it! It's hard to imagine that Homer Hickam's first love is rocketry because he is one heck of a writer! He leads you on a journey where you think your actually there. It is well worth the read, and maybe even a re-read. I really enjoyed it!
Rating:
Summary: ROCKET BOYS/OCTOBER SKY
Review: THIS IS AN EXCELENT STORY TOLD BY THE PERSON WHO LIVED IT. MY ONLY WISH IS THAT IT, AND THE UNIVERSAL MOVIE BASED ON THIS STORY, HAD BEEN PROMOTED MORE. I HAVE HEARD OF SOME SCHOOLS SHOWING IT TO THEIR STUDENTS. OTHER THAN THAT NO BODY I HAVE ASKED ABOUT THE MOVIE, OR BOOK, HAD EVER HEARD OF IT. I HAVE BEEN DOING EVERYTHING I CAN DO TO LET PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THIS WONDERFUL STORY OF THE SUCCESS OF A YOUNG BOY, AND HIS FRIENDS, EXCAPING A MISRABLE LIFE THAT THEY HAD BEEN CONDEMED TO JUST BECAUSE OF THE PLACE THEY WERE BORN.
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Summary: How you wish your teenaged years had been!
Review: I enjoyed this book immensely and can recommend it whole heartedly to just about anyone. It comes down to the fact that I would have loved to be involved with Sonny Hickam, O'Dell, Quentin and the rest of the rocket boys when they were building rockets. Most of my friends are in the same boat, it was practically an ideal teenage life, despite many obstacles faced along the way.I wish I could have read this book when I was 14, because it may well have changed my life. The ideal reader for this book is someone in their early teens who's interested in science, I can imagine the dreams that it will inspire. One small problem I had with the book was that whenever Sonny was talking about Dorothy Plunk, or how to remove a bra, or a fight with his Dad, I always wanted to get back to the rockets. What was the next fuel source, nozzle design or rocket casing? I realize that this would have turned the book into a text on rocket design, so it's better the way it is, but I still found myself wanting the next lauch or test or learning experience. I think that I can easily say that this is an instant classic, destined to be enjoyed for decades to come. I would like to see it added to school curriculums too, I certainly wish it would have been on the list of my Grade 9 novels. Oh... on a final note, if you liked the book, do see the movie "October Sky". It is a great movie, one of my favorites in 1999 and in its own way, just as good as the book.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding book, even if you've already seen the movie
Review: I think that the main thing that surprised me about this book was that I enjoyed it so much after having already seen the movie. Then again, that was partly because it was different enough from the movie to make it interesting and unpredictable. Part of it also is the fact that a book obviously has more of an opportunity to make characters (and for that matter a story) more three-dimensional.
Rating:
Summary: see the movie October Sky too
Review: I kept hearing really good things about the movie October Sky, so, though I didn't know much about the story, I rented it eagerly. It is indeed an old-fashioned crowd pleaser, an almost Capraesque throwback to the great American films of the 40's. It tells the story of four boys from a West Virginia coal town, a company town right out of Tennessee Ernie Ford's great song Sixteen Tons. In a football crazed high school, none of the boys is a very good athlete. Quentin, in fact, is a bookish nerd shunned by the rest of his classmates. Homer, their ringleader, decides, in the wake of the Sputnik launch, that they will build a rocket of their own. After some initial misfires, including demolishing his mother's prized picket fence, and despite the initial resistance of Homer Sr., who manages and truly loves the mine, the boys eventually enlist the aid of the whole community in their project and enjoy increasing success even as the town dies around them. They even determine to try and win the National Science Fair and the attending scholarships which will offer them an opportunity to get out of town. But their plans are smashed when local authorities accuse them of starting a forest fire with one of their rockets and when Homer's Dad is injured in a mine collapse, he drops out of school and goes to work in the mine. But that of course is not the end of it, while working in the mines, Homer teaches himself the mathematics required to prove that the fire could not have been set by one of their launches. Vindicated, he returns to school and goes on to win the big prize. Along the way, he even finds time to reconcile with his Dad. The movie is exactly as hokey and sappy as it sounds and I loved every second of it. But as you're watching, it is awfully hard to suspend your disbelief enough to accept that this is a "true" story. There are simply too many coincidences and ironic twists, folks are just that little bit too noble, events break a little too conveniently, until the unreality of the flow of events starts to impinge on enjoyment of the tale. Don't get me wrong; I still liked it, but that "true story" label was really distracting. At any rate, my curiosity piqued, I grabbed the book and found this epigraph: I have...taken certain liberties in the telling of the story, particularly having to do with the precise sequence of events and who may have said what to whom. Nevertheless, my intention in allowing this narrative to stray from strict nonfiction was always to illuminate more brightly the truth. -Homer Hickman, Jr., Author's Note Now, there was a time when virtually every author's first novel was understood to be a thinly veiled autobiographical tale. Unfortunately, our voyeuristic society seems to place a premium on "reality" and so these novels have been replaced by obligatory memoirs. These books are immediately suspect because they so often recreate huge swathes of dialogue verbatim, often conversations which occurred in childhood, which no one could possibly remember in such detail. And, of course, real life is seldom quite as interesting as fiction and events never happen as conveniently for the plot, so each succeeding memoir relates events that seem increasingly less likely. I mean, does anybody really think that Frank McCourt (see Orrin's review of Angela's Ashes) got his grubstake by rolling an expired money lender? So at this point, when these supposedly true stories have become so obviously fictionalized, why continue this charade? Hickman's book is at least honest enough to tip the reader off that "liberties" have been taken. The story that follows is great fun--a cross between How Green Was My Valley (1939)(Richard Llewellyn 1906-1983) (Grade: A+) and The Right Stuff (1979)(Tom Wolfe 1931-) (Grade: A+)--and is not quite as unbelievable as the movie. One wishes that some editor somewhere would have the great good sense and the simple honesty to call a spade a spade and acknowledge that books like this are in fact novels. Drop the "Memoir" in the title and make an honest man of the author. Then we can just concentrate on the tale he has to tell, which is terrific. GRADE: A-
Rating:
Summary: Fun and Inspiring
Review: I saw October Sky three times before reading Rocket Boys. I borrowed the book from the library, the first time I have done that in a long while. Mr. Hickam's story of his boyhood adventures illustrate what vision and determination can accomplish. I would recommend Rocket Boys to all ninth and tenth grade students. Get away from your computers for awhile and enjoy this wonderful book!
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Summary: For pure entertainment, this is your book
Review: I approached this book with some foreboding, thinking that it was going to be some long, drawn-out tract about science or boring family drama or some-such. To my surprise, I found it a delightful fast read. In fact, like many of the reviewers below, once I started reading it I couldn't stop! Now, I'll start reading the next in the series: The Coalwood Way. I hope Mr. Hickam continues his memoirs. If so, I'll keep buying them, even the hardcovers (I usually wait for the paperbacks). Thanks, Amazon, for providing a great place to buy Mr. Hickam's books. I went to his web site... and it sent me straight here.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books ever written
Review: In my opinion, Homer Hickam's October Sky is one of the best books ever written. It appeals across all age groups, is sad and funny and witty and deep. Written from the perspective of the young man of the coalfield just starting to understand the world around him, it has many underlying themes. Unlike the film, which focused on only one small narrative thread, the book takes the reader into the heart of the little town where "Sonny" grew up. It is a lilting evocation of a time gone by. I don't know of any reader that wouldn't be delighted by it. Even if you've seen the film, you don't know this book. Homer Hickam is a great writer and I can't wait to read all else he's going to provide for us over the years.
Rating: 
Summary: October Sky
Review: A beautiful book filled with hope, dreams and the determination to make it all happen. Homer Hickam did an excellent job of putting his childhood into words. You'll laugh, you'll cry and most of all you'll learn about true valued of life.
Rating: 
Summary: Movie was much better
Review: This is one of those rare instances in which the movie was better than the book on which it was based (which is doubly ironic, considering it's a "true story"). Hickam has a great story to tell, one that most people can identify with; but in my opinion, he does a great disservice to it by trying too hard to be "cute." The book was written over thirty years after the events in it took place--it is difficult if not impossible to believe that his renditions of conversations and dialogue and detailed scene-settings from his childhood are substantially accurate; as a result, many of the scenes come off hokey, self-consciously "nostalgic," almost as if Hickam was writing a movie script as opposed to his memoirs. I understand that he wrote his book to appeal to a wide audience, but I believe it could have been just as effective and much less annoying had he stuck to a straight recitation of the facts and lessons he learned and avoided the need to "charm" us with what are almost certainly historical revisions and creative imaginings or to ram the "coming of age" aspect of his story down the readers' throats. I give the book three stars because Hickam clearly has a good story to tell; I just wish he'd trusted himself to render it free of sappy rhetoric.
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