Cover Reveal and Q&A: The Trouble With Heroes by Kate Messner!

There’s a new Kate Messner?!?

There’s a new Kate Messner!

Fans of the woman’s children’s books rejoice! I have it on very good authority that on the distant date of April 29, 2025, we will have ourselves a beautiful brand new middle grade novel by the name of The Trouble With Heroes.

The plot, you say? Why I’m so glad you asked:

Finn Connelly is nothing like his dad, a star athlete and firefighter hero who always ran toward danger until he died two years ago. Finn’s about to fail seventh grade and never made headlines…until now. Caught on camera vandalizing a cemetery, he’s in big trouble for kicking down some dead old lady’s headstone. But it turns out that grave belongs to a legendary local mountain climber, and her daughter makes Finn an unusual offer: climb all 46 Adirondack High Peaks with her mother’s dog, and they can call it even.

In a wild three months of misadventures, mountain mud, and unexpected mentors, Finn begins to find his way on the trails. At the top of each peak, he can see for miles and slowly begins to understand more about himself and his dad. But the mountains don’t care about any of that, and as the clock ticks down to September, they have more surprises in store. Finn’s final summit challenge may be more than even a hero can face. 

Kate was kind enough to answer a question or two of mine about the book, so dig in and enjoy this rather early preview:

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Betsy Bird: Kate! Thanks so much for giving us this sneak peek into THE TROUBLE WITH HEROES. The title is essentially the philosophy of Finn, the seventh-grade protagonist, at least at the beginning of the book. Where did this book originate for you? Where did you get the idea and how did you know it was worth pursuing?

Kate Messner: Honestly, I started working on this book about eight years ago – not long after I set out on my own mission to climb all 46 Adirondack High Peaks. I always hike with a notebook and pen, and at first, I found myself scribbling poems without understanding whose story I was even writing. Little by little, Finn’s voice grew stronger. I knew he was a kid who was climbing these mountains reluctantly, but it took me about four years (and thirty hikes!) to figure out his story.

During that time, of course, we had the COVID-19 pandemic and all of the heartbreak it brought. Suddenly, the story felt different, and I tossed out most of my earlier draft. Writing this book was nothing like crafting my other novels, but I learned to be patient with it. Sometimes our words need to soak in the world a while before the truth of a story finds its way.

By the summer of 2021, I understood what I was writing: an angry, grieving middle schooler’s journey to find what he needs in the mountains, with unlikely mentors, adventures, humor, and an irresistible dog as his companion. Think Wild meets Because of Winn Dixie.

BB: This book has a lot of elements that you yourself are familiar with. For example, while Finn is slated to climb all forty-six Adirondak High Peaks. you yourself are a hiker as well. I’ve gotta ask then: Have you climbed all forty-six peaks? Do you intend to?

Kate: I have! But my schedule was more relaxed than Finn’s. While he’s “sentenced” to climb them all in a single summer, I spread it out over eight years and became an Adirondack 46er on Whiteface Mountain on September 4, 2023. My hiking partner and I chose Whiteface for our final summit because unlike others, it has a toll road that non-hikers can take to the top, so my husband drove a cake up to meet us at the end of our climb. The official certificate came later; I’m officially the 15,162^nd person to record climbing all 46 Adirondack High Peaks.

BB: You’ve written a vast array of middle grade books for kids already. When do you make the decision to write a novel in verse vs. prose? And what was it about THE TROUBLE WITH HEROES that felt “verse” to you?

Kate: The short answer to this question is “That’s how it started coming out.” But once I had a sense for where this story was going, I had to take a step back and ask, “Why poetry?”  Was this truly the best way to tell Finn’s story?

It definitely wasn’t the easiest. I’d drafted prose novels before in under a year, and this one was taking forever. But the more I circled around the structure of this book (probably hoping to find an easier way out), the more I realized that it needed to be told mostly in verse. Poetry makes space for big emotions – grief and anger, redemption and joy. Poems feel like snapshots, the way memories often do.

BB: Finn ends up an unexpected dog walker (so to speak) in the course of the book. Are you a dog person yourself? And now important was the particular breed of dog to be used in this title?

Kate: I don’t have dogs at home because of allergies, but I’m still very much a dog person. If I meet you out hiking, I’ll definitely ask to pet your dog and will happily put up with sniffles and sneezes the rest of the day.

My main character Finn, however, wants nothing to do with Seymour, the over-friendly, super-drooly dog who accompanies  him on his hikes in the Adirondack High Peaks. But Seymour, like so many dogs, has a way of sneaking into a person’s heart. Seymour is a Bernese mountain dog because they’re good hiking dogs (you probably don’t want to take a dachshund on a 20-mile climb) and because they’re known for being extra drooly.

BB: When writing this book, how much did the final product resemble your first draft?

Kate: Not at all. Because of the way I started this book – a poem here and a poem there – my first draft was just a pile of mud-streaked notebook pages. Once I’d written about 70 poems and had some idea where I might be going, it was like working on a jigsaw puzzle that you picked up at somebody’s grandmother’s estate sale. You know, the one that turns out to be missing all kinds of important pieces. The book was full of holes, along with random pieces that seemed as if they’d come from a totally different puzzle. (Those poems ended up getting cut.)

Fortunately, revision is my favorite part of the writing process, so shaping all those errant poems into a story, adding the connective tissue and the heart, was incredibly satisfying. When this book was finally finished, it was a little hard to send off to my editor. Finn had been my kid for so long that I almost hated to let him go. But I’m glad other kids will get to read his story soon; I think all kinds of readers will find something they need here, along with the poetry, adventure, and humor.

BB: Was there anything you had to take out of this book that made you sad, but was necessary?

Kate: Oh, gosh. So many poems. So many lines that I loved but that didn’t feel true to character. This is a multi-modal story (like my 2018 novel Breakout), so it includes other documents as well as poems. There are text messages, letters, photographs, recipes, report cards, news articles, and more. When I was almost finished revising, I loved the way these fit together, but I also felt like the book was a bit too long. So in my last revision pass, I trimmed over ten thousand words, including many full poems. The book is better and tighter without them, but I was still a little wistful about hitting that delete key.

BB: Finally, you always have an array of books for kids coming out. What are your next few projects that we should keep our eyes peeled for?

Kate: There are two new books in our History Smashers series coming this school year! History Smashers: Salem Witch Trials is out now. It’s a great book for any time of year, but I love the idea of kids picking it up for the great Halloween color scheme on the cover and sticking around for the history myth busting.  And then in March, we’ll have History Smashers: Earth Day and the Environment, which explores the history of the environmentalism, from the first humans who figured out how to control fire to our current challenges with global warming.

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Absolutely delightful.

And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for . . . the cover!

The art on this book jacket is brought to you by cover artist Yuta Onoda.

Special thanks to Kate for answering all my questions today (my Blueberry Award group is going to be particularly interested in that Earth Day book of hers). As mentioned before you can find The Trouble With Heroes out everywhere April 29, 2025. Thanks to Faye Bi and her team at Bloomsbury for this reveal and Q&A.

Filed under: Cover Reveal, Interviews