Creating Hope
January 2006
Banner photo: Katsuhiro Fujino
Hero Books
A hero book is a document, and a process, in which children are invited to be author, illustrator and main character of a book that is designed to give them power over a specific challenge in their life.
A particular problem is identified and named; it is then located as something outside of the person and not bound up as part of their identity, or within their field of self-blame; a "shining moment" is identified in which the person experienced, however fleetingly, some power over, or hope in the face of, the problem; finally, there is discussion of some of the things the person can do, or has begun to do, to achieve a measure of control over the problem.
"Wire Around the Heart" was written, illustrated and is about 11-year-old Oupa. He identifies grief as his problem, drawing it as barbed wire around a flower signifying his limited access to his absent mother.
For a young girl named Memory, the story she needed to tell was one of struggle and triumph over stigma. The last straw was when someone wrote "Memory Phiri is HIV positive" on the toilet wall in the orphanage where she lives. Her shining moment was calling all the girls in the orphanage and explaining to them that yes, this is true, but the reason is that there was no adult or parent to protect her when she was abducted, raped and infected with HIV; the blame and shame belong not with her but with the rapist.
James identifies his problem as loneliness and lack of support. He tells us that it has the most power over him when he is left standing alone on a soccer field in Malawi, after the sun has set and all the other boys have been called home to a family meal by their parents. James lives alone in the same house where his mother and father and two sisters (all deceased) used to spend happy times together.
Young Chester writes: "two frogs hop in the ditch beside the road, in Nekkies, I feel happy." On the final page he looks out at us wearing a white tunic and cap with red crosses on them: "I want to be a doctor because I want to help my family and other peoples that have AID/HIV . . . I love people, and I have peas [peace] for other people, People say I am clever."
Learn how to make a hero book at www.10mmp.org
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