October sky : a memoir

Format:

Book

Title:

October sky : a memoir

Other title(s):

Rocket boys

Author:

Hickam, Homer H., 1943-

ISBN:

9780440235507

Publication Information:

Physical Description:

xvi, 428 pages ; 18 cm

General Note:

Previously published as: Rocket boys.

Contents:

Coalwood -- Sputnik -- Mom -- The football fathers -- Quentin -- Mr. Bykovski -- Cape Coalwood -- Construction of the Cape -- Jake Mosby -- Miss Riley -- Rocket candy -- The machinists -- The rocket book -- The pillar explosion -- The state troopers -- A natural arrogance -- Valentine -- The bump -- Picking up and going on -- O'Dell's treasure -- Zincoshine -- We do the math -- Science fairs -- A suit for Indianapolis -- The national science fair -- All systems go.

Summary:

The author traces the boyhood enthusiasm for rockets that eventually led to a career at NASA, describing how he built model rockets in the family garage in West Virginia, inspired by the launch of the Soviet satellite "Sputnik."

Program Information:

Accelerated Reader Grades 9-12 5.9 21 Quiz 35205 English non-fiction.

Personal Subject:

Hickam, Homer H., 1943-

Subject(s):

Aerospace engineers -- United States -- Biography.

Coalwood (W. Va.) -- Social life and customs.

Geographic Term:

Coalwood (W. Va.) -- Social life and customs.

United States

West Virginia -- Coalwood

Genre:

autobiographies (literary works)

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Silver Falls Library	FIC HICKAM	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The "nostalgic and entertaining memoir" ( People ), originally published as Rocket Boys , that inspired the Universal Pictures film.

"A message of hope in an age of cynicism. . . . Perhaps we all have something to learn from a half-dozen boys who dared to reject all limitations . . . and resolved to send dreams roaring to the sky."-- The San Diego Union-Tribune

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.

With the grace of a natural storyteller, NASA engineer Homer Hickam paints a warm, vivid portrait of the harsh West Virginia mining town of his youth, evoking a time of innocence and promise, when anything was possible. Lush and lyrical, October Sky is a uniquely American memoir: A powerful, luminous story of coming of age at the end of the 1950s, of a mother's love and a father's fears, and of growing up and getting out.

Author Notes

Homer H. Hickam, Jr., was born and raised in Coalwood, West Virginia. The author of Torpedo Junction , a Military History Book of the Month Club selection, as well as numerous articles for such publications as Smithsonian Air and Space and American History Illustrated, he is a NASA payload training manager for the International Space Program and lives in Huntsville, Alabama.