October Sky

The book Rocket Boys and the movie October Sky based on the book have been around since the late ninties but we just discovered them recently. As we were driving through southern West Virginia in early December we began reading the book aloud. It’s the true story of a group of high school friends in a coal mining community who teach themselves to build and fly amateur rockets in the late 1950’s just after the launch of Sputnik. It’s also a poignant cultural study of a particular place and time in American history. Tonight we watched the movie which does a reasonable job of telling an abridged version of the story. Definitely worth watching and most definitely worth reading!