Hero Readings
Who doesn’t love a story about someone going to great lengths to save a friend or make a difference in their world? We all do! Whether you identify with the hero archetype or just love a story full of adventure and intrigue this is a list that can help get you started. Have a favourite hero story that isn’t here that you want us to share? List it in the comments below and we’ll add it here to share with all the other Archetunes readers!
Harry Potter Series by JK Rowling is full of heroic action by girls and boys alike. Think Harry is the only hero in these books? Think again! There is no rule that there can only be one of each archetype in a story. How many heroes can you you identify in the Harry Potter tales? Compete with you friends to see who can name the most!
The stories about Harry, Hermoine and Ron can be found online at your local library. Start here with book #1, the Philosopher’s Stone (also called the Sorcerer’s Stone)
http://fvrl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/1626248021_harry_potter_and_the_sorcerers_stone
The Golden Compass by Philip Pulman. Lyra Belacqua an orphan living in a mighty fantastical parallel universe in which a theocracy called the Magisterium threatens to dominate the world. The world is being taken over by mysterious dust and people have a physical embodiment of their soul in the shape of an animal that accompanies them throughout their lives. When Lyra’s friend is kidnapped, she travels to the far North in an attempt to rescue him and rejoin her uncle but finds an evil lair where children are being viciously separated from their animals. Lyra is an orphan, but she is also a hero.
http://www.readfreeonline.net/OnlineBooks/The_Golden_Compass_Story.html
The Hunger Games Series by Suzanne Collins. Katniss Everdeen lives in sector 12 of a place once known as North America in the nation of Panem,. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one girl and one boy between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss, who lives with and takes care of her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. But Katniss has also resolved to outwit the creators of the games. To do that she will have to be the last person standing at the end of the deadly ordeal, and that will take every ounce of strength and cunning she has.
http://readanybooks.net/fantasticfiction/The_Hunger_Games/
Jacob Two Two Meets the Hooded Fang by Mordecai Richler. Jacob is two times two times two years old and is known for always having to say things twice to be heard in his large Montreal family.
One day, he decided to buy the groceries for his parents. There is a misunderstanding by the clerk, so Jacob finds himself in court. He is sentenced Two Years, Two months, two weeks, two minutes and five seconds in the Children’s Prison hundreds of miles away from civilization. It is a dark, dirty dungeon-like place where the children work and are kept in cells.
This book is probably in your school library right now! You can preview this book here:
http://books.google.ca/books?id=9R3ZpuR9wdAC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
This Can’t Be Happening at MacDonald Hall by Gordon Korman, Bruno Walton and Melvin “Boots” O’Neal, are small-time troublemakers who share a room at the boarding school Macdonald Hall. Across the road is a girls’ boarding school, Miss Scrimmage’s Finishing School For Young Ladies. Best friends, they play mischievous pranks on the school, faculty and other students. They are constantly under the watch of Headmaster William R. Sturgeon, nicknamed “The Fish” due to his surname but also due to the trademark stern, fishy-like stare he uses on his students whenever he disapproves of them. Your mum or dad might have read this book as is was first released in 1978!! But it has been updated for today’s kids to enjoy all action.
This is another book that you can preview here, but just might be in your school or local library (or maybe your mom still has it!)
http://books.google.ca/books?id=c8REnXw0yM8C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false