Rocket Boys,Books,1568959729,

	Rocket Boys (The Coalwood Series #1) by Homer H. Hickam
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Product Details Binding Paperback Dewey Decimal Number 629.1092273 EAN 9781568959726 Format Large Print ISBN 1568959729 Manufacturer Wheeler Publishers Number Of Items 1 Publication Date 2000-04 Publisher Wheeler Publishers Product Description '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. 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 Great memoirs must balance the universal and the particular. Too much of the former makes it overly familiar; too much of the latter makes readers ask what the story has to do with them. In his debut, Hickam, a retired NASA engineer, walks that line beautifully. On one level, it's the story of a teenage boy who learns about dedication, responsibility, thermodynamics and girls. On the other hand, it's about a dying way of life in a coal town where the days are determined by the rhythms of the mine and the company that controls everything and everybody. Hickam's father is Coalwood, W.Va.'s mine superintendent, whose devotion to the mine is matched only by his wife's loathing for it. When Sputnik inspires 'Sonny' with an interest in rockets, she sees it not as a hobby but as a way to escape the mines. After an initial, destructive try involving 12 cherry bombs, Sonny and his cronies set up the Big Creek Missile Agency (BCMA). From Auk I (top altitude, six feet), through Auk XXXI (top altitude, 31,000 feet), the boys experiment with nozzles, fins and, most of all, fuel, graduating from a basic black powder to 'rocket candy' (melted potassium chlorate and sugar) to 'Zincoshine' (zinc, sulfur, moonshine). But Coalwood is the real star, here. Teachers, clergy, machinists, town gossips, union, management, everyone become co-conspirators in the BCMA's explosive three-year project. Hickam admits to taking poetic license in combining characters and with the sequence of events, and if there is any flaw, it's that the people and the narrative seem a little too perfect. But no matter how jaded readers have become by the onslaught of memoirs, none will want to miss the fantastic voyage of BCMA, Auk and Coalwood. First serial to Life. 10-city author tour. (Sept.) FYI: Rocket Boys is currently in production at Universal, which plans to release it later this year. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. Hickam recalls his distinguished NASA career, which all started when he saw Sputnik as a little boy and began designing and launching homemade rockets. With a ten-city author tour. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. In 1957, the national panic set off by Sputnik I reached into the hollows of Coalwood, West Virginia, the setting for this affecting story. The second son of a coal mine's manager, teenage Homer went bonkers about rockets, listening to Sputnik I's beep, watching it streak across the night sky, and yearning to work for Wernher von Braun. So he formed a rocket club, whose adventures in launching the Auk series of rockets, from their first attempt that burned up Mom's fence to the last that flew six miles up, form the frame of the memoir. The content comes from the conflict and gossip generated by his rocket compadres' activities, and if dialogue is remembered suspiciously accurately and entrances and exits occur with too dramatically effective timing, the narrative still rings true. Hickam's profiles of Coalwood's people (some, he admits, are composites) invite cheers and boos: boos for brother Jim and his thick-browed gridiron buddies, always threatening to pound on Sonny and his four-eyed friends; cheers for rocketeer Quentin, surely a composite geek from central casting whose word of approval is prodigious. Even if Hickam stretched the strict truth to metamorphose his memories into Stand by Melike material for Hollywood (and a movie has been made, with release set for late this year), the embellishing only converts what is a good story into an absorbing, rapidly readable one that is unsentimental but artful about adolescence, high school, and family life. Could generate intense interest. Gilbert Taylor '[T]horoughly charming....Hickam builds a story of overcoming obstacles that is worthy of Frank Capra...[in its]...eloquent evocation of a lost time and place.' --Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times -- Review Hickam admits taking 'certain liberties' in telling it. But whatever its flaws, it's a good bet this is the story as he told it to himself. -- The New York Times Book Review, James R. Gaines The only flaw of Rocket Boys is that its plot seems just a shade too well made even for a work of fiction, let alone a memoir.... Yet if Hickam's plotting seems here and there manipulated, what always ring true are his adventures in rocketry. -- The New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt '[T]horoughly charming....Hickam builds a story of overcoming obstacles that is worthy of Frank Capra...[in its]...eloquent evocation of a lost time and place.'—Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times “A thoroughly charming memoir ... [An] eloquent evocation of a lost time and place.”—New York Times “A stirring tale that offers something unusual these days ... a message of hope in an age of cynicism.”—San Diego Union-Tribune “A great read ... One closes the book with an immense feeling of satisfaction.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution '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. '[T]horoughly charming....Hickam builds a story of overcoming obstacles that is worthy of Frank Capra...[in its]...eloquent evocation of a lost time and place.' --Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times Rocket Boys and October Sky are one and the same. Enjoy. An author whose book is turned into a film by Hollywood must be concerned that the film makers will at least capture the spirit and essence of his work if not the precise story. The producers of October Sky, I'm happy to report, have done an excellent job in bringing my memoir, Rocket Boys, to the screen. The title of the film, October Sky, is an anagram of Rocket Boys. A marketing survey indicated that Rocket Boys as a title would confuse the audience with another movie, Rocket Man, and therefore the change. In any case, I am proud of the film and also proud to have this mass market version of my book under the October Sky title. Not a word has been changed from the original Rocket Boys book. Rocket Boys, I am gratified to report, has touched so many people in so many heartening ways. I hope this version will reach even more people and continue the miracle it represents. '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. Customers who bought this item also bought October Sky (Special Edition) The Coalwood Way (The Coalwood Series #2) Sky of Stone: A Memoir We Are Not Afraid: Strength and Courage from the Town That Inspired the #1 Bestseller and Award-Winning Movie "October Sky" Back to the Moon: A Novel Customer Reviews for: Rocket Boys (The Coalwood Series #1) Rating - A fun up-beat read, but nothing fabulous I give this book two stars mostly based on personal taste. It is a fun read, and has an up-beat tone that leaves you feeling pretty good about people and the world. Unfortunately, though, there just isn't much to it. The scenery, characters and story telling are a banal mix of Hickham's strung-together memories and a big rusty can of Americana. There isn't anything very ambitious or exciting about it; Rocket Boys is simple, straight-forward, and decently entertaining. If it were a food, it would be chicken ... Read More Rating - Highly Entertaining Read. I enjoyed this true life story so much I bought a copy for our grand children. It is inspirational, I would like to see it on the reading list for middle schools everywhere. When young people are motivated, encouraged and supported, they can and many times will do amazing things. To struggle through some difficult circumstances, have some expected support and some un-expected opposition and to achieve their goals was a great story. The relationship between Homer and his father will be related to by many. One page ... Read More Rating - If you were born in the 40s If you were born in the 40s as I was, in New York, reading this book will take you back to the time you 'heard' about the coaltowns in West Virginia. This story will match your memories ... not to mention your memories of the era it represents. I LOVED it! see more reviews See all books by author Homer H. Hickam

Books : Rocket Boys (The Coalwood Series #1)