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Paco: The Cat Who Meowed in Space
People who bought this also bought...
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Rocket Boys
- The Coalwood Series, Book 1
- By: Homer Hickam
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 673
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 611
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 616
The New York Times best-selling memoir that inspired the film October Sky, Rocket Boys is a uniquely American memoir - a powerful, luminous story of coming of age at the dawn of the 1960s, of a mother's love and a father's fears, of a group of young men who dreamed of launching rockets into outer space... and who made those dreams come true. Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Homer Hickam's lush, lyrical memoir is a marvelously entertaining chronicle of triumph.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Endearing Memoir of the Early Space Race
- By Paula on 10-03-16
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From Rocket Boys to October Sky
- By: Homer Hickam
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 2 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 59
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 56
Since the publication of the #1 bestseller Rocket Boys: A Memoir in 1998 and the premiere of the movie October Sky in 1999, many Homer Hickam listeners and fans have wondered how and why he wrote the book, and how the movie was made. Incidental to that are such questions as "What is Jake Gyllenhaal, Chis Cooper, Laura Dern, etc. really like?" and "What's it like to have a movie made about your life?" and "Why are the book and movie different?" and "Why are both book and movie still so popular after all these years?" The answers to those questions and a lot more are in Homer Hickam's new audiobook From Rocket Boys to October Sky.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Enjoyable account of the story becoming a movie
- By G. Eggleston on 01-02-18
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Sky of Stone
- A Memoir
- By: Homer Hickam
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 56
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 46
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 46
In the summer of '61, Homer "Sonny" Hickam, a year of college behind him, is dreaming of sandy beaches and rocket ships. But before Sonny can reach the seaside fixer-upper where his mother is spending the summer, a telephone call sends him back to the place he thought he had escaped, the gritty coal-mining town of Coalwood, West Virginia. There, Sonny's father, the mine's superintendent, has been accused of negligence in a man's death.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Mr Hickam is a great story teller
- By Paul C. on 12-12-16
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Carrying Albert Home
- The Somewhat True Story of a Woman, a Husband, and Her Alligator
- By: Homer Hickam
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 129
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 118
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 119
Elsie Lavender and Homer Hickam (the father of the author) were high school classmates in the West Virginia coalfields, graduating just as the Great Depression began. When Homer asked for her hand, Elsie instead headed to Orlando, where she sparked with a dancing actor named Buddy Ebsen (yes, that Buddy Ebsen). But when Buddy headed for New York, Elsie's dreams of a life with him were crushed, and eventually she found herself back in the coalfields, married to Homer.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Absolutely Delightful!!
- By Sharon on 03-01-16
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The Man Who Knew the Way to the Moon
- By: Todd Zwillich
- Narrated by: Todd Zwillich, Angelo Di Loreto
- Length: 3 hrs and 32 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 13,731
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 12,634
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 12,592
Without John C. Houbolt, a mid-level engineer at NASA, Apollo 11 would never have made it to the moon. Top NASA engineers on the project, including Werner Von Braun, strongly advocated for a single, huge spacecraft to travel to the moon, land, and return to Earth. It's the scenario used in 1950s cartoons and horror movies about traveling to outer space. Houbolt had another idea: Lunar Orbit Rendezvous. LOR would link two spacecraft in orbit while the crafts were travelling at 3,600 miles an hour around the moon. His plan was ridiculed and considered unthinkable.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Caveat Emptor: Bone to Pick
- By Judah Family on 07-05-19
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The Coalwood Way
- By: Homer Hickam
- Narrated by: Frank Muller
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 43
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 38
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 36
about growing up in a town that’s slowly fading away.
Homer and his close buddies, who call themselves the Rocket Boys, are high school seniors in 1959. Their rocket building experiments amaze the locals, thanks to top-quality moonshine for fuel, “liberated” materials, and Homer’s self-taught understanding of higher math. But no matter how brilliant their experiments are, they can do little to help preserve Coalwood’s way of life.
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4 out of 5 stars
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great but narrator a bit weak
- By Paul C. on 03-20-17
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Rocket Boys
- The Coalwood Series, Book 1
- By: Homer Hickam
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 673
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 611
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 616
The New York Times best-selling memoir that inspired the film October Sky, Rocket Boys is a uniquely American memoir - a powerful, luminous story of coming of age at the dawn of the 1960s, of a mother's love and a father's fears, of a group of young men who dreamed of launching rockets into outer space... and who made those dreams come true. Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Homer Hickam's lush, lyrical memoir is a marvelously entertaining chronicle of triumph.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Endearing Memoir of the Early Space Race
- By Paula on 10-03-16
-
From Rocket Boys to October Sky
- By: Homer Hickam
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 2 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 59
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 57
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 56
Since the publication of the #1 bestseller Rocket Boys: A Memoir in 1998 and the premiere of the movie October Sky in 1999, many Homer Hickam listeners and fans have wondered how and why he wrote the book, and how the movie was made. Incidental to that are such questions as "What is Jake Gyllenhaal, Chis Cooper, Laura Dern, etc. really like?" and "What's it like to have a movie made about your life?" and "Why are the book and movie different?" and "Why are both book and movie still so popular after all these years?" The answers to those questions and a lot more are in Homer Hickam's new audiobook From Rocket Boys to October Sky.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Enjoyable account of the story becoming a movie
- By G. Eggleston on 01-02-18
-
Sky of Stone
- A Memoir
- By: Homer Hickam
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 56
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 46
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 46
In the summer of '61, Homer "Sonny" Hickam, a year of college behind him, is dreaming of sandy beaches and rocket ships. But before Sonny can reach the seaside fixer-upper where his mother is spending the summer, a telephone call sends him back to the place he thought he had escaped, the gritty coal-mining town of Coalwood, West Virginia. There, Sonny's father, the mine's superintendent, has been accused of negligence in a man's death.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Mr Hickam is a great story teller
- By Paul C. on 12-12-16
-
Carrying Albert Home
- The Somewhat True Story of a Woman, a Husband, and Her Alligator
- By: Homer Hickam
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 129
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 118
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 119
Elsie Lavender and Homer Hickam (the father of the author) were high school classmates in the West Virginia coalfields, graduating just as the Great Depression began. When Homer asked for her hand, Elsie instead headed to Orlando, where she sparked with a dancing actor named Buddy Ebsen (yes, that Buddy Ebsen). But when Buddy headed for New York, Elsie's dreams of a life with him were crushed, and eventually she found herself back in the coalfields, married to Homer.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Absolutely Delightful!!
- By Sharon on 03-01-16
-
The Man Who Knew the Way to the Moon
- By: Todd Zwillich
- Narrated by: Todd Zwillich, Angelo Di Loreto
- Length: 3 hrs and 32 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 13,731
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 12,634
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 12,592
Without John C. Houbolt, a mid-level engineer at NASA, Apollo 11 would never have made it to the moon. Top NASA engineers on the project, including Werner Von Braun, strongly advocated for a single, huge spacecraft to travel to the moon, land, and return to Earth. It's the scenario used in 1950s cartoons and horror movies about traveling to outer space. Houbolt had another idea: Lunar Orbit Rendezvous. LOR would link two spacecraft in orbit while the crafts were travelling at 3,600 miles an hour around the moon. His plan was ridiculed and considered unthinkable.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Caveat Emptor: Bone to Pick
- By Judah Family on 07-05-19
-
The Coalwood Way
- By: Homer Hickam
- Narrated by: Frank Muller
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 43
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 38
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 36
about growing up in a town that’s slowly fading away.
Homer and his close buddies, who call themselves the Rocket Boys, are high school seniors in 1959. Their rocket building experiments amaze the locals, thanks to top-quality moonshine for fuel, “liberated” materials, and Homer’s self-taught understanding of higher math. But no matter how brilliant their experiments are, they can do little to help preserve Coalwood’s way of life.
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4 out of 5 stars
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great but narrator a bit weak
- By Paul C. on 03-20-17
Editorial Reviews
In this follow-up to Rocket Boys, the memoir adapted into the popular film October Sky, Joe Barrett’s warm, folksy narration invites the listener to settle in to the story of what happened next to the young man intent on going to space. Paco: The Cat Who Meowed in Space is the cheerful story of Homer Hickam’s realization of the American Dream, in this case a long-desired career as a NASA engineer. Woven throughout is Hickam’s deep relationship with his cat Paco. As the first cat to meow in space, Paco reveals the healing possibilities of the human-animal relationship.
Publisher's Summary
Homer Hickam, author of the memoir Rocket Boys (made into the movie October Sky), recalls his first years as a NASA engineer, while also telling the story of his fluffy black and white cat Paco, who had the magic ability to make people smile and give them hope. But when Paco was struck down by a disease that left him unable to walk, Hickam was faced with a terrible decision, let his beloved cat live in misery or put him to sleep. Before that decision could be made, the space mission Hickam was working on needed to be rescued and there was only one sure way to save it: Paco's magic meow! This is a true story of the space age, that is also a delightful tale of the love between an engineer and his cat.
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Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Gillian
- Austin, TX, United States
- 02-05-14
And I'm Being Generous
Disclosure: Anything with animals ups my rating.
But where's Paco?
Really, I wanted to like this. I tried. Honestly, I did. But, yeesh! It was mostly a meandering memoir with a cat barely peeking into the narrative now and then, and not often enough to save this distressing bore of a book. If Paco, the cat, had been featured more, perhaps I'd feel differently. But, as he woefully was not, what can I say?
If you're looking for a nice break, something engaging that is light(er)-hearted and has something to do with animals, go for the Bob the Streetcat books. There you'll find an animal that was given a chance to shine in the narrative.
Here, you'll just get a YA tour of a glossed-over space program (ahem! We joyfully took in a bunch of yes, gifted and motivated, scientists, but, ahem! Nazis... can we at least have a line or two as to any misgivings we may have had?). And there was an opportunity to go into the Challenger disaster, but here, it's just a sad bummer with too little information about the horror of the experience.
And once again: Where's Paco?
Really! The entire epilogue is a bunch of clever emails sent back and forth about how a cat might relieve himself in space. It's about a character Hickman wrote in a novel... a character... based on Paco! But in the epilogue itself? Where the hell is the real Paco?!?
The narration is respectable, but it sounds like an older gentleman reflecting on his life. On his childhood home. On his place within the space program. On his hobby of scuba diving or looking for fossils. On how maybe someday he'll write a book, on this, that, and the other. (Hey! I've got an idea. How about writing a book about Paco?)
Spare yourself the money, and the time. Give this one a pass. (Sorry, Paco. The few lines I heard of you? You sounded cute)
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Donna
- Port Richey, FL, United States
- 05-01-15
Amusing story
What is it like to be a NASA engineer? Also, what is it like to be his cat? This brief book gives us a look into the research that created the Space Shuttle program, as well as its effect on the people and cats who supported it. A fun story for pet lovers, and especially for students just getting interested in science.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- BarryB
- 03-31-15
Cat lover's delight!
If a little furry purr ball has ever owned your heart, this will put a smile - or several - on your face.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful