Review of the Day: The Trouble with Heroes by Kate Messner

The Trouble with Heroes
By Kate Messner
Bloomsbury Children’s Books
ISBN: 9781547616398
$17.99
Ages 9-12
On shelves now

Jerks. They’re great. On the page, that is. If you’re an adult that reads loads of middle grade children’s novels on a regular basis then you might, like me, be a bit sick of the nice kids. Nice kids are the bread and butter of children’s literature. They’re good-hearted, relatable, kind, and deeply, deathly dull. They get picked on by bullies and stand up for their little sisters and generally blend together so well that you have a hard time remembering one book from another. Compare all that to Finn in The Trouble with Heroes. You know what he’s doing when we meet him? Kicking over the headstones of complete strangers in the cemetery. You know how he feels about that act? He doesn’t really feel anything at all, actually. Finn is a rage-filled young man prone to sarcasm, disdain, and a general sense of jaded ennui. He is, in short, the perfect antidote to all those perfect protagonists out there and one cannot help but think that right from the start young readers are going to be HERE for what this book is putting down.

“If I were a better kid, this story would begin with my seventh-grade diploma. Instead it starts with this…” What follows is a news clipping with the headline, “Local Cemetery Vandalized”. We learn that a kid (our protagonist, as it happens) was caught kicking over a headstone at 4:00 p.m. on a Friday. And not just any headstone either. Turns out, Finn has had the misfortune (or is it fortune?) to kick and break the headstone of Edna Grace Thomas. Edna’s a bit of a local celebrity, having not only climbed all 46 of the Adirondack High Peaks but also provided correspondence and words of encouragement to fellow hikers for decades. So when Finn is brought before her daughter, he’s given an odd opportunity. To make reparations, Finn must climb all 46 of the same peaks that Edna did. This, from a kid who has been failing gym (to say nothing of his English class). Oh, and one more thing. He’s gotta wear Edna’s old hiking boots and bring along her drooly, farty dog, Seymour. Now Finn’s climbing, sweating, snarking, and yet also observing, baking, and writing poetry ostensibly for an English class where he’s supposed to focus on the topic of what makes a hero. With a father who saved lives in 9/11 then died during COVID, Finn’s relationship with the notion of heroism is shaky at best. What makes a hero? And why are they so much trouble?

There are probably at least five good themes at work simultaneously in this book for kids, which is no easy task to maintain. Messner’s been in this game for a while, and in many ways this title is a culmination of all the hard work she’s put into the art of writing over the years. As such, the topics of grief, loving someone with addiction/PTSD issues, personal responsibility, developing a love of nature and the natural world – that’s ALL in here! Yet the theme that I particularly gravitated to the most was the central one: What makes a hero? Or, rather, when you’ve been labeled a hero, what price do you pay? This book could have been so easy for Messner. All she had to do was make Finn’s dead dad a saint, then spend the rest of the book having her protagonist struggle with what it means to be the son of a hero and what heroism means, and so on and so on, and SNORE! I’m sorry, but I’ve read that book. You have too. We don’t remember what those books’ names were either because that topic isn’t really all that interesting. You know what is interesting? A dead hero who shamed his son regularly for baking or wearing aprons or twirling for fun because it was “girly”. A guy who never spent time with his family because he was too busy helping other people. The complexity of this dead dad is a thing of beauty. It means that the reader, just like Finn, has to come around to figuring out how to think about the guy. Messner puts both Finn and the young readers through the same paces in trying to figure this guy out, and in the end it’s not like it’s a done deal. Finn comes to a place of peace but not entirely one of understanding. And that’s okay.

I want to double back a bit to what I was saying at the beginning about Finn being a jerk. There’s a lot of talk, when it comes to writing books for kids, on how to make your character likable. You, as the author, need the reader to care and invest in them. A lot of writers do the thing where the wisecracking kid immediately experiences something deeply unfair. Or, failing that, they’ll show their good heart by some selfless action. There’s just gotta be something about them that makes you like them enough to stick with them. But what did Messner do with Finn? Frankly, I couldn’t remember, so I went back to the book to try and figure it out. Partly, it comes down to voice. Finn’s snarky, sarcastic, and done with the world around him, but he’s also legitimately funny. He also owns up to his vandalism right at the start, while also alluding pretty consistently to his trauma. It’s so strange that I didn’t remember how often he mentions being broken at the beginning of the book. It could come off as whiny, but somehow the combination of petulance, hurt, and humor make you, at the very least, want to see where this kid is going. Curiosity is a powerful factor in getting a young reader to turn that next page (heck, it works on adults too, I suppose).

Did I tear up? I did tear up. I know enough of middle grade novels to know that if a character complains at length about something small and loving that is annoying them, be it younger sibling, younger cousin, or drooly dog, at some point in the proceedings that young or drooly companion is going to be placed in some kind of peril. In this case, Messner really turns the screws near the end of the book, and it doesn’t hurt that the audiobook narrator of this title cranks the acting up to 11 (more on him in a bit). So not only is this book tackling 9/11, the COVID-19 Pandemic, and a love of the outdoors and nature but it’s making you laugh and cry as well. And you’re not even annoyed with it when it succeeds. Doggone it.

A quick word of advice: I don’t know how your kid prefers to read their books, but if they are at all into audiobooks then you can’t go wrong with the read performed by Mack Gordon. Gordon perfectly captures Finn’s snide take on the world around him. Yet when those moments come when our hero is overcome by emotion, Mack Gordon somehow has this ability to make his voice crack in sorrow. Just a little. Just enough to make you, the listener, break a bit as well. Of course, because I listened to this as an audiobook, I had no idea what this book looked like visually. I didn’t know it was a verse novel for one thing. Seriously! I had no clue! Also, the way it’s laid out on the page, it’s incredibly visually appealing. Messner breaks everything up with newspaper articles, advertisements, text messages, obituaries, poems, and “Choose Your Own Disaster” sections. What’s incredible is that Mack Gordon’s read never gives you a minute’s pause. That man can read Finn’s auto-reply of “I am not lost in the woods or being stalked by a panther or getting swatted by a bear,” a hundred times and you enjoy it each time he does. It’s a remarkable adaptation of a book that must have been a heckuva schlep to adapt.

I suppose it’s a bit late in the review for me to realize that my earlier statements about the trouble with protagonists in children’s books is just a slight reworking of this book’s titular theme. The trouble with the hero in a book for kids is that they’re just so darn hard to write. All too often they fall into a prescribed type, and that type isn’t all that interesting because they’re so common. But in this book, Finn felt damaged in all the most interesting ways. And if you cut through the design of the book (which is infinitely kid-friendly and keeps the eye busy in a good way) the story at its heart is strong. How do you write a book with hope and heart and all that emotional stuff but still make it interesting to kids? The Trouble with Heroes is the answer. Homeric.

On shelves now.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Notes on the Cover: It’s a strong cover. A fine cover. But it is a cover sadly lacking in sufficient drool. Seymour looks positively pristine here. Like they gave him a bath and then posed him for this shot. More mud. More drool. But very good smile. This is clearly a good boy.

Interviews: Curious about the behind-the-scenes of this title? I did the cover reveal and a Q&A with Kate way back in September, so get a little additional info on where it came from.

Filed under: Best Books, Best Books of 2025, Review 2025, Reviews