Rocket Boys Book Essay

Reaching for your dreams is like looking at the Sunday newspaper comics, if you look from a far, you see the big picture, but if you look close, all you see are a bunch of dots put together. October Sky is a film based on Homer Hickam’s determination to win a national science fair. He is constantly ostracized by his community and family and does not have much money to support him either. Homer clearly doesn’t have a good chance at even getting to the science fair, let alone winning it. Many obstacles are in his way and he can’t even see his goal with all of them in the way. Somehow, he perceivers and finds a way to reach his goal. His friends did not believe in him, but later started to really believe and they all

Boys & Girls Clubs of America is a program that was introduced in the 1860’s in Hartford Connecticut. “Believing that boys who roamed the streets should have a positive alternative, they organized the first Club. A cause was born.” Now made up of more than 4,300 clubs and in their 103rd year, the goal of these clubs is “to enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens.”

“In an age when Americans enjoy dozens of cable sports channels, when professional athletes often command salaries in the tens of millions of dollars...it’s hard to fully appreciate how important the rising prominence of the University of Washington’s crew was to the people of Seattle in 1935” (Brown 173). As seen by this quote, America is a much different place than what it was in the 1930s. The times have changed significantly. In today’s day and age we have it all too good. The world we live in is one of leisure and not nearly as much hard work as there used to be. Back in the early 20th century the people had it pretty rough and dealt with many frightening problems of their generation such as

A person’s childhood very often helps establish who they grow up to be. This idea has proved to be true in the memoir Rocket Boys by Homer H. Hickam. Coalwood, West Virginia was not only Sonny’s hometown, but also an influential character. Coalwood was very uniform and all the citizens took an interest in similar activities during the time-period in which he grew up. For example, "Only coal mining was more important...than high school football. Sputnik, and anything else, was going to always come in a distant third” (Hickam 27). This mentality causes an issue for Sonny, as he aspires to pursue an alternate career in rocket-building. While most of the townspeople are apprehensive of his plans initially, a majority begin to respect his choices

This setting makes achieving dreams more difficult. They were forced to prove everyone wrong about the rocket-building. “To get out of here, you’ve got to show your dad you’re smarter than he thinks. I believe you can build a rocket. He doesn’t. I want you to show him I’m right and he’s wrong” (Hickam 51). Sonny’s mother and a small number of others believed they could build rockets, but everyone else, including his father, was against it. People did not just leave Coalwood after high school without a scholarship or money saved for college. “‘You’ve got to get out of Coalwood, Sonny,’ Mom said. ‘Jimmie will go. Football will get him out. I’d like to see him a doctor, or a dentist, something like that. But football will get him out of Coalwood, and then he can go and be anything he wants to be’” (Hickam 50). Elsie did not want her children to get trapped in the small mining town because she knew it was only a matter of time before its economic stability went bad. She also wanted them to be more than just another miner, she believed in her kids more than they did at times.

An effort to come up with money, the Rocket boys decide to dig out metal pipes from the ground as scrap metal, then sell it. Odell stated "We dig up those pipes, bust'em into pieces, and sell the lot to a scrap yard. We'll make a ton of money and it's all legal!" (Hickman, 1998, p. 261) The boys prepared for a camping trip in the area of the scrap metal. After camping 5 days, they were on their tenth pipe when Homer was hammering on the scrap iron, his foot slipped when trying to catch himself his left wrist was cut by a sharp object. Initially, Sonny and his friends thought it was funny until they seen he was bleeding and it was serious. Odell took his shirt off and tied it around the left wrist in efforts to stop the bleeding. Sonny became

In October Skys, Sonny and the Rocket Boys faced nearly impossible odds and persevered through all of the obstacles they encounter. They were truly amazing young boys with courage, determination, and a will to do what they had their minds set on no matter what life threw at them.

After hearing about the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1 satellite launch, Hickam saw the satellite fly across the sky. The beauty and astonishment lured young Homer Hickam, and quickly, rocketry was at the center of his mind. The rest of Homer's life was the story of fulfilling his love for rocketry. It became his perfect chapter. He devoted hours to creating small rockets with his other three classmates. Even though by default, Hickam was expected to work in the mines, he did not believe in his destiny, his gloomy fate. His fiery heart of rocketry incinerated the miner's mind. That previously small ember of a flying satellite produced the bonfire that shaped Homer Hickam's life. Even the resistance of his father, could calm his passion. Hickam's experience may be emotional, but some do not see the event as molding Hickam's life due to the underestimation of its impact on his life. Although it is understandable that such a small experience should not have so big of an impact, it must be kept in mind that events will leave influences that will continually modify the

Sonny and the rest of the Rocket Boys had to follow through with many steps in order to complete their process of making rocks. With little knowledge, the rocket boys had to believe in themselves that they could succeed in building rockets. There were many steps the Rocket Boys had to go through like things such as, finding the right materials to use, learn more math and science equations, and most importantly, they had to learn how to build the rockets. With their knowledge and support from the community around them, the Rocket Boys had enough confidence to create many different rockets.

For my reading assignment, I chose “The Rocket Boys” by Homer Hickam Jr. It is an autobiography written more like a fiction novel about a high school aged boy, Homer, who lived in a coal mining town named Coalwood. His father ran the coal mine and wanted his son to follow in his footsteps but Homer did not want to become a miner. He wanted to grow up to be a rocket engineer. Homer and his father were never great friends and this built tension between them all the way through Homer’s high school years. This passion for rockets began while Homer was watching the Russians launch a satellite into space for the first time ever. He started to learn about rockets and with a group of friends, he started to

Everyone is told at a very young age that they can be whatever they want to be. But is this really true? In our day and age, with technology advancing daily, many young people find that it isn’t as easy to follow one’s dreams as is portrayed in fairy tales. October Sky is like these books, as it shows boys following their dreams by creating homemade rockets. But what makes this seemingly unrealistic book stand out from the rest is its ability to inspire. This book intrigues the reader and draws them in as it shows the characters as they learn.

Racism, the one of many problems that cannot and will probably never get solved. All American Boys by Jason reynolds is a fictional book read throughout various high schools that helps children and adults depending on who´s reading views many different social problems in present day. Despite the school board´s recent sentiments regarding the lack of value that fiction provides, fiction remain in the schools curriculum like the fictional book All American Boys, keeping adults and children aware of present day social problems since most fictional books are usually relatable to the problems their audience are going through.

The autobiography Rocket Boys tells the true-to-life story of Homer ‘Sonny’ Hickam Jr., a young boy with a love of books, freedom, and rocket science who is living in Coalwood, West Virginia, a small mining town during the mid-20th century. Unlike his football-playing brother Jim, Sonny has no chance of a sports scholarship, yet he desperately does not want to end up stuck in Coalwood like his father, the Coalwood mining company foreman. After almost giving up on a scholarship, Sonny watches the Russian satellite ‘Sputnik’ fly into orbit on television and stays up all night waiting to see it in the sky, inspiring him to send something into the heavens himself. After being inspired by ‘Sputnik,’ Sonny, with the help of a group of boys called

In all of us there is a battle between the good and bad ;and as the Grandfather explained in the poem it is your choice which side to feed. Brunos dad from The boy in The Striped Pajamas made the wrong choice of feeding his bad side. This choice that Bruno dad made of anger and pure inhumanity. In the Native American poem the grandfather is explaining to his son that in all of us there is a good and a bad side.

1.) To what extent could Dean expect to apply the philosophies and techniques of JIT described in this chapter to the running of a staircase cell.