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<\/figure>\n<\/div>Review of How to be a Hero<\/em> by Florence Parry Heide (San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 2016).<\/p><\/div><\/p><\/div>\n Being a \u201cnice boy,\u201d living in a \u201cnice house\u201d with \u201cnice parents and lots of toys\u201d ought to be \u201cenough for anyone,\u201d the narrator of this intriguing, off-beat story tells us. \u201cWell, it wasn\u2019t enough for Gideon. Gideon [\u2026] wanted to be a hero. You know, a hero, with his name on the front page of the newspaper. That sort of thing.\u201d Gideon\u2019s bedroom walls are covered with colorful drawings in which he appears climbing a tower, climbing a beanstalk, fighting a dragon in chainmail, and flying through the air wearing a red cape that resembles the red towel he ties around his neck while menacing teddy bears with a wooden sword.<\/p>\n Gideon\u2019s quest begins with a clear-cut episode of philosophical inquiry, starting from the question, \u201cSo how does anyone get to be a hero, anyway?\u201d His wondering leads him to three criteria: \u201cYou have to be strong. You have to be brave. You have to be clever. Don\u2019t you?\u201d Gideon is clever enough to test his criteria against the examples of characters he takes to be heroes in fairy tales he knows, like the one who rescued a princess by using her long hair to climb the tower where she was imprisoned, the one who woke a princess from an enchanted sleep brought on by a witch\u2019s poisoned apple by kissing her, the one who found a glass slipper lost by a young women attending his party, and (Gideon\u2019s favorite) the kid who climbed up a big vine and sneaked off with a bunch of \u201cgood stuff\u201d that belonged to a sleeping giant. \u201cGideon thought about how all those guys turned out to be heroes, and he decided they hadn\u2019t really had to do anything or be anything.[\u2026] They just had to be at the right place at the right time.\u201d Had Gideon\u2019s story ended there, it would be a worthwhile exercise in deconstructing the gender politics of traditional fairy tales.<\/p>\n However, convinced he has figured out how to be a hero, Gideon ventures into town\u2014red cape in place\u2014where he \u201cpaid attention\u201d and \u201ckept his eyes open\u201d for the right opportunity. And here the story turns comically satirical: because Gideon looks for \u201csomeone who was sleeping or someone with unusually long hair, or [a] glass slipper or any beans,\u201d he misses chances to be of real help to people around him: a man whose dog has run off, a girl whose cat has climbed a tree but is too afraid to climb back down, an elderly woman about to cross a busy street, and a very young boy in tears who seems to be lost. These situations are not mentioned by our narrator but portrayed in the illustrations, so that spotting one prompts the reader to look for more, and suddenly appreciate the irony of Gideon\u2019s misplaced attention.<\/p>\n In fact, this comically wry story presents a clear instance of what the late American philosopher Gareth B. Matthews (2005) called \u201cPhilosophical Story Irony,\u201d in which a character believes something the reader knows not to be true, which the reader won\u2019t be able to explain without doing some philosophical work. Gideon\u2019s wrong-headed notion of heroism is confirmed in his own mind when buying a candy bar makes him the ten thousandth customer at the local supermarket, and he is celebrated with \u201cballoons and flowers and cakes\u201d and with people \u201ctaking pictures, clapping him on the back, congratulating him.\u201d He is rewarded with his name and photo in the newspaper and the promise of \u201ca candy bar anytime he felt like having one.\u201d \u201cHe was a hero,\u201d the narrator concludes, \u201cAll because he had managed to be at the right place at the right time. Good!\u201d But while the narrator has told what happens to Gideon, the illustrator has told a very different story of heroism: A mother carrying a baby in the supermarket steps on a spilled apple, tossing her baby into the air (right over Gideon\u2019s head!) and a young, female store clerk (not incidentally, the only person of color in the book) catches the baby. In the final image, the clerk poses with mother, baby, and supermarket manager for the newspaper photographer, while oblivious, self-satisfied Gideon is seen walking home, clutching his balloons and candy bar.<\/p>\n \u201cSo how does anyone get to be a hero, anyway?\u201d If fame is not sufficient is it at least necessary? Does heroism come in different kinds, like the kind that comes from extraordinary ability, from disciplined accomplishment, and from accidental celebrity? Is a person who does something heroic only or partly for the sake of celebrity any less a hero? In our contemporary world of influencers, internet memes, political rallies, and viral videos, have ambition and charisma become another kind of heroism? (The back cover of the book depicts Gideon as Napoleon.)<\/p>\n The book\u2019s jacket suggests that Florence Parry Heide (author) and Chuck Groenink (illustrator) \u201cexplore how we choose our idols in a witty story that leaves the real nature of heroism for the reader to choose.\u201d And so it does. Many amateur online reviewers of the book recommend that it be discussed between adults and children, especially because they worry that its irony will be lost on its young audience. Matthews, who convincingly laid that worry to rest, would nevertheless applaud that recommendation\u2014for the benefit of adults as much as of children.<\/p>\n Reference:<\/strong><\/p>\n Matthews, Gareth B. (2005) Children, Irony and Philosophy. Theory and Research in Education 3(1): 81-95.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Maughn Gregory Being a \u201cnice boy,\u201d living in a \u201cnice house\u201d with \u201cnice parents and lots of toys\u201d ought to be \u201cenough for anyone,\u201d the narrator of this intriguing, off-beat story tells us. \u201cWell, it wasn\u2019t enough for Gideon. Gideon [\u2026] wanted to be a hero. You know, a hero, with his name on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":177,"parent":0,"menu_order":70,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-754","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":756,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/754\/revisions\/756"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}