True Heroes: A Treasury of Modern-day Fairy Tales Written by Best-Selling Authors

True Heroes is a collection of short stories for 8 year olds, each one written by a children's author for a real child who has faced a serious illness and has a very big dream.

What happens

Every story starts with a short page about the child it was written for. You meet Lilly, Korbyn, Jacob, Cami and more, with their illness named and the thing they most wanted to be. Then comes the story, with that child as the hero.

Shannon Hale's Lilly is a warrior princess locked in a cursed tower by goblins. She keeps herself awake by singing until her mother knocks the tower down, and then she rides straight into battle.

Korbyn gets to be a fire chief, and his story is the funniest. A boy keeps asking him to rescue things from a tree. First a kite, then a shoe, then a cat, and eventually a car and an elephant, each one thrown up there to knock down the last!

Jacob races motocross in front of fifty thousand fans and flies through a flaming hoop. Cami becomes a fairy for one night and gets to fly over a lake with a hummingbird. Annika, the youngest, is a two-year-old fashion designer with a very fierce attitude.

The stories are all different. Some are silly, some are dreamy, and a few are honest about how hard being ill can be. What they share is that every child is strong and gets their big moment.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

This is a book about seriously ill children, and the introductions name their illnesses. Cami's story is told by a girl lying in bed with an IV, wishing to be somewhere without "pain or medicine or tests". It's hopeful all the way through, but it doesn't pretend illness isn't there.

For a child who has been poorly themselves, or who loves someone who is, it might feel really special to see kids like them as the heroes. For a child who finds hospitals frightening, you might want to read it together.

What to read next

If Lilly's story is the one they love, Shannon Hale's The Storybook of Legends is a whole book set in a school for the children of fairy-tale characters.