Countdown
1 Pages 303 Words
COUNTDOWN by, Ben Mikaelsen
Setting:  
ľ Crazy Peak, MT
ľ Dakar, Senegal,
ľ Endeavor (space shuttle).  
Main Characters:  
ľ Elliot Schroeder, a 14-year-old boy who goes to space.
ľ Vincent Ole Tome, a boy about the same age as Elliot who is from Kenya.  
ƒæ Vincent¡¦s father, a Maasai warrior.  
ƒæ Elliot¡¦s father, a rancher.  
Point of View:  
ľ Narrator
Theme:
ľ 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:  
ƒæ 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 don¡¦t 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:  
ƒæ 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....