A young boy spends the summer on his grandparents' farm in New Hampshire while his mother works for the war effort in New York and his father serves on a destroyer in the Pacific.
Describes the "life before stardom" and selection of a New Hampshire teacher as the first private citizen to go into space, her training as an astronaut, and the shuttle disaster that ended her life.
The biography of Christa McAuliffe--the eldest child of a close Catholic Massachusetts family and a dedicated Girl Scout who came of age in the turbulent sixties and early seventies and became a schoolteacher and a mother. She was little known beyond her personal circle until selected by NASA to be the first civilian sent on a space mission as the "Teacher in Space.".
The first private American citizen chosen to go on a spaceflight, Christa McAuliffe, lost her life when the Challenger exploded just after liftoff. Describes her special interest in the space program.
The author describes her unique friendship with a pig named Christopher Hogwood, a sickly piglet who helped her develop a new relationship with neighbors in her small-town community.
