Why does Elsie paint the mural in the book Rocket Boys/ October Sky?
This is the plot, hope it helps.. Homer “Sonny” Hickam, Jr. lived in a small coal mining town in West Virginia named Coalwood. Sonny, after seeing Sputnik, the world’s first artificial Earth satellite, decides to join the American team of rocket engineers, the ABMA, when he graduated from school. (Note: In the book Rocket Boys, the main character is always called Sonny. In the movie October Sky, he is called Homer.) Sonny’s older brother, named Jim Hickam, was excellent at football and expected to go to college on a football scholarship. Sonny, however, was terrible at sports and had no special skill that will get him “out of Coalwood”. Sonny’s mother was afraid that he will have to work in the mines after high school. She planted in his mind the idea to build a rocket to impress his father enough to pay his way through college. Sonny’s first attempt at rocketry consisted of a flashlight tube and model airplane body as a casing, fueled by flash powder from old cherry bombs. It exploded
