After spending hours searching, Ron walks up to the check-out desk and places his books on the counter. Ron finally reaches the library and nervously goes inside to find the perfect books about flying because he aspires to be a pilot one day. The illustrations show no signs of segregation as Ron greets a friendly grocer who offers him a doughnut and passes by his friend playing basketball at the local court. The story begins when Ron wakes up in the morning and starts his mission to the Lake City Public Library. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program.

Department of Education also provides grants to students from disadvantaged backgrounds through the Ronald E. McNair Educational Science Literacy Foundation (DREME), which supports students in STEM education. Today, McNair’s legacy lives on through educational programs like the Dr. Prior to the Challenger’s explosion, McNair spent 191 hours in space and orbited the earth 122 times. He was selected by NASA as one of 35 out of 11,000 candidates, and operated the Challenger’s robotic arm that helped Bruce McCandless take an untethered spacewalk that became a historic event. In 1984, he also became the second African American to reach outer space. Most people remember Ron as one of the 7 astronauts who lost his life in the 1986 space shuttle Challenger explosion, along with teacher Christa McAuliffe. Naden and illustrator Don Tate help readers experience the life and aspirations of Ron as a young boy in 1959 when segregation laws prohibited African Americans from borrowing books from the library. Ron’s mother, wife, and Gloria Wilson, administrative assistant to the director of library systems in Florence County, South Carolina helped retell this remarkable story.

Ron’s Big Mission is a stand-alone, first edition, biographical fiction picture book based on interviews about a real incident that happened to famous African American physicist and astronaut, Ron McNair. Why can’t I check out books like everyone else?” said 9-year old Ron McNair as he attempted to check out books about flying at the Lake City Public Library.

Ron's Big Mission by Rose Blue