Not All Heroes Wear Capes: 9 Books About Ordinary and Everyday Heroes

Librarians can be everyday heroes, too, and I love that this book, in translation by Japanese author Michiko Toyama, celebrates this idea. The story follows a librarian in Tokyo named Sayuri Komachi. As a diverse range of people visit Sayuri in the library, she finds the just-right books to help them at that moment in their lives.

Speaking of libraries and heroes, this sweet book by Sara Nisha Adams stars a heroic widower grandfather visiting a library in the hopes of connecting with his granddaughter. Mukesh lives in London and worries about his granddaughter, Priya, who spends all day reading in her room. In a subtlely heroic gesture, Mukesh comes up with a plan to get through to her. Stopping by the library, he meets Aleisha at the check-out desk and picks up a unique reading list from her.

This next book in translation by Sandro Veronesi also features a grandparent-grandchild dynamic and highlights the quiet heroism that can arise in everyday life. In 1960s Florence, Marco Carrera faces life’s emotional ups and downs, from the loss of loved ones to caring for his granddaughter as well as his own elderly parents.

While we’re on the topic of Italy, Christine Simon’s charming book set in the tiny Italian village of Prometto shines a spotlight on the power of a small-town hero. With a water crisis growing dire in Prometto, charismatic vacuum repairman Signor Speranza gets caught up in an elaborate scheme to raise the money for the town’s pipe repairs.

So far the fiction titles I’ve selected on this list of books about everyday heroes have been set in the ordinary world. When you consider heroes in sci-fi books, you may think superpowers. However, Becky Chambers does an incredible job of calling attention to an ordinary hero in this endearing sci-fi novella. On a moon called Panga, nonbinary Sibling Dex has become a tea monk, traveling in their eco-friendly ox-bike wagon to different settlements. They then listen to people’s worries and mix the perfect tea to soothe their troubles. Sometimes being a hero means simply listening to someone when they need it. This story promises lots of hopeful philosophical pondering, plus some Iron Giant robot BFF vibes, so you won’t want to miss it!

While fiction books uplift ordinary heroes, nonfiction books about everyday heroes can be so profound and moving too. Reading about someone’s ordinary heroism in real life can make the idea of being a hero feel that much more attainable. This nonfiction graphic memoir by Kim Hyun Sook shows how reading banned books can be an act of ordinary heroism. Hyun Sook draws us into her college days in 1983 in South Korea when the Fifth Republic military regime enforced censorship and brutalized and murdered protestors. Despite these difficult circumstances, Hyun Sook takes a quiet stand by joining a secret banned book club with some of her new school friends.

This powerful memoir by Syrian refugee Yusra Mardini will stay with you long after you finish reading. Yusra and her sister Sarah’s heroism is incredibly inspiring. Yusra recounts the harrowing journey she and Sarah made as they fled Syria and traveled by boat with a number of other refugees to Greece. When their boat’s engine fails, the two teens jump into the water to help pull the boat to safety. The Netflix movie adaptation of Yusra’s story called The Swimmers is very much worth watching too.

I wanted to round out this list with this emotional memoir by Amra Sabic-El-Rayess. This book shows how anyone can be a hero, even our four-legged friends. As Muslim teen Amra and her family struggle to survive the Bosnian genocide in the 1990s, they meet a stray cat who becomes a guardian spirit for them over the years, turning up at crucial moments. Along with this, the cat provides them comfort, which is an act of ordinary heroism in itself.