Heroes take chances, do hard things, and sometimes even change the world. To become a hero, kids can surround themselves with supportive people, boost their self-esteem and self-awareness, find their passion, and have the courage to make things happen. What makes a hero? Activists, advocates, allies, and friends. Sometimes heroes are our parents, teachers, or siblings. The truth is, heroes are inside everyone, and kids can and discover their inner hero, too. Here’s an adapted excerpt from the Preface and Chapter 1 of Matt Langdon’s The Hero Handbook, a new book that shows kids how to be the hero of their own story and discover their own hero journey. So you want to be a hero? Or maybe you’re not sure. What does that even mean, anyway? Well, we’ll talk about it. But this book is for anyone looking to find a little more direction -- whether that means setting some goals or coming up with a plan for your own life, or just means learning how to affect change in your community. Or the world! This book is going to help you figure out how to be someone who takes action instead of standing by, and who works to move their own journey forward… What Is a Hero? Dictionaries, the media, and history give us different definitions of what a hero is, but none of them are very useful for us. In myth and story, the hero offers us an example of how to live our lives. The hero is an exemplar--literally, a good example. That explains why we have so much trouble pinning down a definition in today’s world. There are so many of us, living in different cultures, but also living in each other’s pockets on our phones, that there’s no way we could all agree on what a good example is. Mythology and stories will let me get started on my efforts to define “hero” for you, though. Definition 1: The Hero In a Story A hero is the main character of a story. Back in 1949, Joseph Campbell wrote a book called The Hero With a Thousand Faces. He had spent years travelling the world reading and listening to stories about heroes from mythology. Campbell noticed that all of these stories were basically the same--they have the same pattern. A hero from two thousand years ago in the Middle East has the same basic steps in their story as a hero from two hundred years ago in England and the one in the movie coming out this weekend in India. Campbell called this pattern the “Hero’s Journey.” Campbell found about 40 steps in each hero’s journey, but I’ve reduced it to five basic steps that every hero story contains. The steps are: Mundane World: The hero begins the story in a normal, typical, or boring place. He doesn’t want to be there, but often they don’t know how to get out or even what else is available to them. This is Luke Skywalker’s Tatooine,