Rocket Boys
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| Author | Homer Hickam, Jr. |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Part 1 of 3 |
| Genre(s) | Memoir |
| Publisher | Delacorte Press |
| Released | 15 September 1998 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 384 |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-385-33320-X (hardcover edition) |
| Followed by | The Coalwood Way |
Rocket Boys is the first memoir in a series of three, by Homer Hickam, Jr. It is a story of growing up in a mining town, and a boy's pursuit of amateur rocketry.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
Homer "sonny" Hickam lives in a small coal mining town in West Virginia named Coalwood. Sonny, after seeing the Soviet Union launch Sputnik, knows that he wants to help the American team of rocket engineers, the ABMA, when he graduates from high school and college. However, people in Coalwood normally graduated from high school and then went directly into the mines for the rest of their lives. Sonny's older brother, named Jim Hickam, is excellent at football and expects to go to college on a football scholarship. Sonny, however, is terrible at sports and has no special skill that will get him "out of Coalwood". Sonny fears that he will have to go work in the mines after high school.
After seeing the failures of the American space program, Sonny decides that he wants to "help out the ABMA" by building his own rockets. His first rocket consisted of a flashlight tube and model airplane body as a casing and crushed up cherry bombs for fuel. It exploded violently, destroying his mother's fence. After that, Sonny enlisted the help of other boys in the area to help him build his rockets. These people were Quentin, Roy Lee, O'Dell, and Sherman. Their next rocket, which used black powder as fuel, was named Auk 1 in honor of the flightless bird. It used a soldered washer as a nozzle and a steel tube for casing. It flew a total of six feet before the nozzle failed. After that, the group of boys started calling themselves "Rocket Boys" and called the place they were launching their rockets from "Cape Coalwood", in honor of Cape Canaveral.
The Rocket Boys enjoyed mixed success during their rocket launching campaign, with some of their rockets flying and others not. They eventually hit upon a fuel mixture called rocket candy. They fired a total of 34 rockets (Auks I - XXXI, with 4 different Auk XXIIs), with a maximum height of over six miles.
[edit] Characters in "Rocket Boys"
Homer "Sonny" Hickam, Jr. is the main protagonist and narrator of the story. He is 14 years old at the beginning at the story. He is the unspoken leader of the Rocket Boys, and gets discouraged somewhat easily. He has an older brother named Jim and parents named Elsie and Homer Sr.
Quentin Wilson is an intelligent member of the Rocket Boys and the person who does most of the math and analysis required in rocket building. He is very methodical and systematic, solving problems with a step-by-step approach.
Roy Lee Cooke is a member of the Rocket Boys who isn't as intelligent as some of the other Rocket Boys, but he has a car and he knows many things about subjects that the others may not be as well educated on (dating, places to get moonshine, etc.).
Jimmy O'Dell Carroll is a member of the Rocket Boys who has an eye for money-making opportunities. His father works as the town garbageman, so he has access to scrap pieces of junk that other people were throwing away. Everyone calls him O'Dell.
Sherman Siers is a member of the Rocket Boys who has a weak leg due to polio. For the first few rockets, he insists on lighting the fuse, even though he can not run as fast as the other boys. He is quiet and intelligent, and he quietly helps out the Rocket Boys. His crippled leg never sets him back. He died at age 26 from a heart attack.
Willie "Billy" Rose is a member of the Rocket Boys who joins the group about a year after it is founded. He has excellent eyesight and can find rockets very well.
Miss Riley is a chemistry teacher at Big Creek High School. She gives Sonny a book called "Principles of Guided Missle Design" that is extremely useful to the Rocket Boys in the future. She also orchestrates the Rocket Boy's entry into the National Science Fair. She is diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma shortly before Sonny leaves for the science fair. Later, she dies of her disease.
Homer Hickam, Sr. is a hard-headed mine foreman in Coalwood and Sonny's father. He takes his job very seriously, going out of his way to help miners in distress. He is almost always at odds with the union leader, John Dubonnet. Homer Sr. seems to not care about Sonny's affairs as much as he does Jim's; Sonny points this out in the book much to Homer Sr.'s chagrin.
Elsie Hickam is Sonny's mother. She is supportive of Sonny's rocket building, but often finds herself at odds with her husband, Homer Sr. about the rocket building. She often tells Sonny to "not blow himself up."
Jim Hickam is Sonny's older brother. Sonny and Jim sometimes do not get along well, and have frequent arguments that sometimes end in fights. Jim is the star football player at Big Creek High School.
Dorothy Plunk is Homer's love interest throughout the novel until she started dating Jim. Dorothy Plunk was actually a pseudonym for the actaul girl Homer pursued. Homer and Dorothy reunited at their high school reunion in 1985.
[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
Rocket Boys was made into a film in 1999, titled October Sky. The book was then re-published as October Sky shortly afterwards.
[edit] Trivia
Rocket Boys is also a fictional band of British rock cited in the anime Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad.
