Countdown

            
            
            
            
            
            
             Elliot Schroeder, a 14-year-old boy who goes to space.
             Vincent Ole Tome, a boy about the same age as Elliot who is from Kenya. .
             Vincent's father, a Maasai warrior. .
             Elliot's father, a rancher. .
             Point of View: .
             Narrator.
             Theme:.
             I think that there are a few points to this story. One, is that friendship can help you get through a lot of different types of hardships. The second, I think that the author is trying to tell you that you never know when you wake up in the morning, if your going to make a friend for life. .
             Plot: .
             Fourteen-year-old Elliot Schroeder has always dreamed of becoming a pilot, but his father expects him to stay on the family's ranch in Montana, when he grows up. Across the world in Kenya, fourteen-year-old Vincent Ole Tome dreams of going to the white man's "wood school," but his dad wants him to be a Maasai warrior. When Elliot wins the nationwide lottery to be NASA's first Junior Astronaut on board the space shuttle, Endeavor. Then he meets another boy, Vincent, from Kenya, a place in West Africa. The boys dont exactly hit it off at first. Then when the shuttle has to make an emergency landing in Dakar, a place on the West Coast of Africa. Then the fly Vincent over to where Elliot has landed and they put their differences aside and become friends. .
             Connection to Coarse Content: .
             I think that this, in a way, relates to Patrick Henry's speech, because it has to do with not getting along with people simply because of their cultural differences.