Making a Hero Book: A Guide for Facilitators

Published by the Regional Psychosocial Support Initiative (REPSSI), this book offers a series of autobiographical storytelling and art exercises, designed to support children and youth to identify a significant psychosocial obstacle standing in the way of their goals, and to find ways to gain power over this obstacle. According to the guide, by doing this and creating Hero Books, children find solutions to the personal and social challenges they face. The process also helps to encourage the community to respond to these challenges in an active way.
During the process of making Hero Books, children learn to share some of their inner world and life story, which helps facilitators to learn more about them, and encourages narrative and solution focused therapies. Each exercise has a different purpose and include elements of history taking, history making, and community mobilisation. The basic method involves inviting children to make a book in which they are the authors, illustrators, and main characters. However, to make the process safer for children, they don’t have to use their real names, either as the author, illustrator, or main character. Hero books can be 'the truth', 'based on the truth', or 'completely made up'. It is up to the author to decide.Click here to access the most recent version of this document in the publications section of the Novartis website.