The Trouble With Heroes

The Trouble With Heroes by Kate Messner

Book #12 for 2026

This was our first listen-aloud book for the 2026-2027 academic year. In the past, I typically have only posted about grown-up, mostly non-fiction books that I read by myself, but I thought I’d start sharing some of our family read aloud titles too. At least, I’ll start sharing the ones that we find particularly important, delightful, engaging, etc.

This is a modern story. I liked it because it gave us insight into the mind of a troubled and grieving 13-year-old boy. It made us feel empathy for him. It made us feel all the things, including making me tear up and having our whole family rolling with gales of laughter. The book is written as a series of poems. It was very engaging, and poignant. It was also really heavy with themes of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers, PTSD, the death of a parent, alcoholism, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The narrator, Mack Gordon, was absolutely fantastic. He read it with perfect emotion.

Here’s a few of my favorite passages:

“My mother loved the mountains,

Kelly says again.

She believed they had the power to heal.

To help a troubled soul find peace.

Make a broken person whole.

When she says those words —

Troubled.

Broken.

She looks at me.” pages 19-20

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“Some things are just tough

and there’s no way around

the hard parts.

Only through.

Sometimes there’s no good path —

just a bad way and a worse way —

so you might as well choose one

and get started.” page 256

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“The Mountains Must Get Tired

Soaking up sadness

from so many people

who spill tears on the granite

when no one’s looking

and cry into the wind

when they think nobody can hear.

But maybe they’re big enough,

old enough

to hold some of that sadness for all of us.

Maybe Kelly knew that.

Maybe that’s why I’m here.” page 273

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🍪 It didn’t hurt that the book was sprinkled with cookie recipes to bake and taste test! I love it when we can cook something we’ve read about, and a book gets bonus points if it includes a recipe!

The recipe from page 81 required us to first make chocolate covered candied orange peel.

We hope you get to read a good book or bake some good cookies sometime soon!