Billy Come Home

Reason I Selected This Book I chose the book October Sky because of all the great things I heard about it. There have been a lot of rumors going around that this book is fast reading because once you get started you just simply cant put it down.

Most Interesting Aspect The most interesting aspect would have to be that young boys this intelligent can create a rocket without any help from others all from scratch.

Expectations About The Book When reading the book most of my expectations were met, however some were not. Before I even touched the book I thought they would call Homer Hickam, Homer, but instead they called him Sonny. Another expectation of mine that was not met was when the rockets boys named their rockets, I thought Sonny would name one after his dad but instead he named one after his teacher, Mrs. Riley.

English: Homer Hickam on set of October Sky

Author of Rocket Boys Homer Hickam, Jr. (left) and...

Rocket Boys

Brief Summary Throughout the book the boys were inspired by a lot of people but the one person that inspired them the most was their teacher, Mrs. Riley, whom they named the last rocket they ever launched after. At first when the boys started to build and launch rockets they ran into a couple of problems. They got arrested for false assumption, were not able to get some parts because of lack of funds, and were not able to get their rockets to launch high due to mechanical problems. After working hard for awhile, the boys decided to enter the science fair which they won without much competition and to their surprise, they got to go to Indiana to represent Coalwood in another science fair. Due to high expenses, they could only afford to send one of the boys which was Sonny. The Rocket Boys won first place in the science fair and were all offered scholarships for college. After graduating from college, Homer Hickam became a NASA engineer training astronauts for Space Shuttle Missions.

The Space Shuttle Discovery and its seven-member S...

Virginia Tech College of Natural Resources and Env...

Science fair exhibit (butterflies), probably the e...