Author
June teamed up with international bestselling authors, Rebecca Moesta and Kevin J. Anderson, to create the “Star Challengers” science adventure books for young readers. The tThree books are action-packed science fiction adventures featuring a group of young people using a Challenger Learning Center as a springboard for actual journeys into the future to a moonbase, a space station, and an asteroid mission. Real science is woven throughout the action so readers learn basics of space science even as they are caught up in the action. Purchase your copies today!
Purchase your copies today!
Praise for the Star Challenger Series
“The Star Challengers books inspire young readers with that sense of adventure, introducing them to a universe of exciting possibilities.”
— Buzz Aldrin
“It’s the next best thing to being there.”
— Neil Armstrong.
— Aramis Knight, star of Ender’s Game
Students at a Challenger Learning Center in Kentucky read from the Star Challenger series alongside the Mayor of Paducah.
Silver Linings
Silver Linings ~ My Life Before and After Challenger 7 is June’s personal story. It is the story of a ragged teenager who struggles to overcome adversity. It is a story of courage, forgiveness, personal triumph, and dreams to soar above it all. And it is the story of finding a small glimmer of light during a time of profound personal grief and using that silver lining to create something remarkable.
Praise for Silver Linings: My Life Before and After Challenger 7
“My 19 year old daughter, Isabelle, told me that she is in the middle of reading Silver Linings. She said that she can’t stop crying and it slows down her reading. “Will I ever get to see June again?” she asked. She was a fan of yours before and now she’s an even bigger one! Add her to your list of the thousands whom you inspire every day.”
“To many [Dr. June Scobee Rodgers] has been the face of courage and even optimism. I listened to her talk to a gathering on the 25th anniversary of that last Challenger launch and was impressed with her intelligence, her faith, and her power of positive thinking and support of space exploration. That was nothing compared with how I felt after I read this book. Silver Linings tells her story from her childhood until the present day. You will be astounded at the obstacles she has overcome from her very beginnings. Every step along the way was a struggle to have a comfortable family life and an education. She does a marvelous job in describing her turn away from grief and a shattered heart.”
“Everyone has a life story, but the story behind the life of June Scobee Rodgers is not only a surprise, but it is hard to believe. One sees her today as the nationally known widow of Commander Dick Scobee who was killed when NASA’s Challenger exploded in 1986. She celebrated the lives of the Challenger crew by creating Challenger Centers to inspire young people to learn about science and space. Silver Linings is a page-turner. The reader will learn a thing or two about being a child of the homeless, being bullied, and the ability to hide the hurt. And add to that a fierce determination and a lofty set of goals. The reader will not only admire June Scobee Rodgers, but love her.”
Scobee has a formula for overcoming adversity
By Nell Mohney for timesfreepress.com, February 1, 2014
In her beautiful book “Silver Linings,” June Scobee Rodgers gives us an up close and personal account of Jan. 28, 1986, when the Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated shortly after takeoff. Her then-husband, Dick Scobee, commander of the craft, and all other crew members were killed.
When June was only 9 years old, she read Norman Vincent Peale’s book “The Power of Positive Thinking.” That was the catalyst enabling her to write her formula for overcoming her many adversities. Among them were poverty, a mother who had many hospitalizations for her mental illness, and being in many different schools because her father, an itinerant carpenter, moved the family often for him to find work.
It was in one of those schools that June was put in a class for slow learners because she couldn’t print. Her first-grade teacher had taught cursive writing but not printing of block letters. It was there June was most discouraged until the day all students took an IQ test. Days later, it was announced June had the highest IQ in the entire school. She was promptly sent to the correct grade.
There, she developed her formula for overcoming adversity: “A — develop attitudes that will keep me positive; B — believe in God and myself; C — commit to doing whatever necessary to turn my scars into stars.” Her formula enabled her to receive a doctorate degree from Texas A&M University and to become a teacher.
Incidentally, in an eighth-grade civics class, June told the class she wanted to be a teacher. A classmate said loudly, “You will never be a teacher. You’re so poor, you won’t ever see the inside of a college classroom.” Years later, June must have found some perverse pleasure in seeing that classmate in the crowds that welcomed June on the day the governor of Alabama declared a “June Kent Scobee Day.”
On the day of the Challenger disaster, June’s life took a 180-degree turn. After her public grief, which the nation shared, she rose to establish 51 Challenger Centers for Space Science Education and to find a new life and love with Lt. Gen. Don Rodgers.