by Sue Heavenrich
Astronaut Jessica Meir hails from Caribou, Maine, the second-largest city in Aroostoock County and just 12 miles from the Canadian border. The county itself is huge, about the size of Rhode Island plus Connecticut, and well-known for potatoes, timber, and tourism. Now Caribou can add “birthplace of an astronaut” to its list.
Not just any astronaut. In 2019, Jessica and her partner-in-space Christina Koch made history completing the first spacewalk made solely by women. They spent more than seven hours outside the International Space Station replacing a broken power unit. You can watch the NASA video here.
Writing a biography about a famous astronaut wasn’t something Fran had on her to-do list, but when the editor of Down East reached out to her about working on this book, Fran said yes.
“It sounded like it would be a fun project,” Fran said. “and I was interested in writing about Jessica for a couple of reasons. Unlike a lot of famous people, she hadn’t yet been the subject of a book yet, and I wanted to show how someone who grew up in such an unlikely place as Caribou, Maine could reach for the stars.”
Becoming an astronaut is not the sort of goal kids from rural Maine normally aspire to. “Sometimes when you’re in a rural area, you face limits because the people around you kind of impose their own limits on you,” muses Fran. “Fortunately, Jessica’s parents were well-educated and very supportive of education. That opened up possibilities.”
At the core of writing nonfiction is research. Fran began by doing a general search for basic information. “The internet has made finding information easier, and because she’s a celebrity there’s an incredible amount of information out there.” Fran had no trouble finding articles in Maine papers, the Boston Globe, and other media.
“Jessica had done video interviews with TV stations, and there are videos about her on YouTube,” Fran says. “Not only that, she has published scientific papers about oxygen use in birds during high-altitude flight and articles about deep dives. She’s one of those people you could research forever and never feel you know everything!”
One especially valuable source for Fran was the transcript of an interview Jessica had with an archivist at the Brown University’s Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women.
“What a treasure trove! Because it had been conducted by an archivist, the interview was very thorough and professional, covering everything from Jessica’s family to her experience aboard the ISS.” Finding that interview, Fran explained, saved her weeks of research.
A lot of research is digital, but Fran still likes her old-school methods. “I have files downloaded and printed out. I guess having a stack of paper makes you feel like you've done your homework!” Fran also has about fifty PDFs of online sources on her hard drive, “though not as organized as they could have been,” she admits. But they allowed her to highlight particular facts she wanted to include in Jessica’s biography, and easily locate them in a search.
Fran wrote the book during 2023, and each time she sat down to work on it she asked herself: “If you wanted to be an astronaut, what are the things that would eliminate you?” She focuses on some of these challenges throughout the book – even providing some interactive moments for readers to find out if they have what it takes to become an astronaut.
“I wanted to write a book that kids from anywhere can see themselves in,” says Fran. “Books were important to me as a kid. They inspired me. That’s why I write for children.”
In addition to writing books for kids and posts for the GROG, Fran was previously guest at our Annual Arthropod Roundtable and is a member of SCBWI. You can read her profile and see some of her books here.
