Apollo Dreams. The Space Case Chronicles, #1

Before there was Apollo Dreams, there was a boy in a clothes dryer pretending to command the stars. Nine-year-old Billy McBride knows exactly where he belongs. Not in the classroom, where the other kids call him "Space Case."Not on the playground, where bullies know exactly how to make him feel small. Not even at home, where his older brother Sean, once his best friend and loyal spaceship first officer, is drifting into the strange new world of rock bands, long hair, and teenage cool.
Billy belongs in space. Inside his imagination, he is Captain Billy Apollo, youngest commander in the Galactic Fleet, defender of alien worlds, hero of impossible missions, and fearless leader of the starship Constellation One. But back on Earth, in northern New Jersey in 1970, Billy has a very real mission ahead of him. His birthday is April 11, the same day Apollo 13 launches for the Moon. For a NASA-obsessed kid who still carries the wonder of Apollo 11 in his heart, it should be the greatest day of his life.
Then everything starts to go wrong. As school bullies close in, friendships shift, family tensions rise, and the whole country watches Apollo 13's dangerous journey unfold, Billy must learn that courage is not only something heroes show in outer space. Sometimes courage means standing up after being knocked down. Sometimes it means forgiving someone who hurt you. And sometimes it means believing that the weird kid, the dreamer, the "Space Case, " might be exactly the hero everyone needed all along.
Apollo Dreams is a funny, heartfelt middle-grade coming-of-age adventure filled with 1970s nostalgia, NASA excitement, Beatles-era pop culture, schoolyard humor, family warmth, and the boundless imagination of a boy trying to find his place in the universe. Book One of The Space Case Chronicles.