The Trouble with Heroes
by Kate Messner
Middle School    Bloomsbury    288 pp.
4/25    9781547616398    $17.99
e-book ed.  9781547616404    $12.59

When seventh grader Finn Connelly is caught on a surveillance camera kicking over a headstone in a local Lake Placid cemetery, little does he know it was the grave of Edna Grace Thomas, “Queen of the High Peaks,” one of the first women 46ers: those who have climbed all forty-six Adirondack High Peaks. Edna’s daughter, Kelly, sets Finn on a mission of atonement: to climb all forty-six mountains in memory of her mother. She suspects that Finn can use what the peaks offer: “The power to heal. / To help a troubled soul find peace. / Make a broken person whole.” Finn begins a hero’s journey, accompanied by Seymour, “the most slobbery, / drooly-faced, / smelly-furred, / farty-butted dog / in the world,” along with a series of 46er “trail nannies,” and soon realizes that “the trouble with long hikes / is that your brain has to come with you.” He has plenty of time to think about the mess he has made of his life recently and about his anger and grief over the (unprocessed) loss of his father two years earlier. Messner relates Finn’s story through an animated first-person narrative and through the poems Finn must write for a school project, mixing in text messages with his mother, letters to his English teacher, cookie recipes, and more. This verse novel covers a lot of ground, literally and metaphorically, and thoughtfully grapples with the big ideas of life.

From the March/April 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.