Hero

by Mike Lupica

Overview

From the #1 New York Times bestseller Mike Lupica comes the story of one unsuspecting boy poised to follow in his superhero father’s footsteps

Fourteen-year-old Billy Harriman can feel the changes. The sharpening of his senses. The incredible strength. The speed, as though he can textmessage himself across miles. The confidence and the strange need to patrol Central Park at night. His dad had been a hero, a savior to America and a confidante of the president. Then he died, and the changes began in Billy. What Billy never knew was that his father was no ordinary man-he was a superhero, battling the world's evil. This is a battle that has been waged for generations and that knows no boundaries.

And now it's Billy's turn to take on the fight. It's Billy's turn to become a hero.

“[N]othing Mike Lupica has written will thrill you like this.” –William Goldman, author of The Princess Bride
 
“Sportswriter and novelist Lupica offers a change of pace from his previous sports stories for younger readers, deftly reworking the traditional superhero origin story into a moving tale of adolescent growth.” –Publisher’s Weekly
 
“[T]he stage is set for a sequel to what looks like a surefire hit.” –School Library Journal

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101198377
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	11/02/2010
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	528,995
Lexile:	730L (what's this?)
File size:	219 KB
Age Range:	10 Years

About the Author

Mike Lupica is the author of multiple bestselling books for young readers, including QB 1, Heat, Travel Team, Million-Dollar Throw, and The Underdogs. He has carved out a niche as the sporting world’s finest storyteller. Mike lives in Connecticut with his wife and their four children. When not writing novels, Mike Lupica writes for New York's Daily News, appears on ESPN's The Sports Reporters and hosts The Mike Lupica Show on ESPN Radio. You can visit Mike Lupica at mikelupicabooks.com
 

Read an Excerpt

1
 
THERE were four thugs, total gangsters, in front of the house with their rifles and their night-vision goggles. Four more in back. No telling how many more inside.
 
So figure a dozen hard guys at least, protecting one of the worst guys in the world.
 
Not one of them having a clue about how much trouble they were really in, how badly I had them outnumbered.
 
Hired guns, in any country, never worried me. The Bads? They were the real enemy, worse than any terrorists, even if I was one of the few people alive who knew they existed.
 
Even my boss, the president of the United States, didn’t know what we were really up against, how much he really needed me.
 
When he talked about our country fighting an “unseen” threat, he didn’t know how true that really was.
 
When my son, Zach, was little, I used to tell him these fantastic bedtime stories about the Bads, and he thought I was making them up. I wasn’t.
 
The snow was falling hard now, bringing night along with it. Not good. Definitely not good. I didn’t need a blizzard tonight, not if I wanted to get the plane in the air once I got back to the small terminal near the airport in Zagreb. Which was only going to happen if I could get past the guards, get inside, and then back out with the guy I’d come all this way for. It meant things going the way they were supposed to, which didn’t always happen in my line of work.
 
My official line of work? That would be special adviser to the president. A title that meant nothing on nights like this. On assignments like this. The real job description was fixing things, things that other people couldn’t, saving people who needed saving, capturing
people who needed to be stopped. Dispensing my own brand of justice.
 
Sometimes I had help, people watching my back.
 
Not tonight. Tonight I was on my own. Not even the president knew I was here. Sometimes you have to play by your own rules.
 
On this remote hill in northern Bosnia, near where the concentration camps had been discovered a few years before, I had managed to finally locate a Serb war criminal and part-time terrorist named Vladimir Radovic. He was known to governments around the world
and decent people everywhere as Vlad the Bad because of all the innocent people he’d slaughtered when he was in power, before he was on the run.
 
To me, he was known by a code name, which I thought fit him much better:
 
The Rat.
 
I was here to catch the Rat.
 
Me, Tom Harriman. About to blow past the guns and inside a cabin that had been turned into an armed fortress.
 
Almost time now. I didn’t just feel the darkness all around me, as if night had fallen out of the sky all at once. I could feel another darkness coming up inside me, the way it always did in moments like this, when something was about to happen. When I didn’t have to keep my own bad self under control. When I could be one of the good guys but not have to behave like one.
 
The me that still scares me.
 
Time to go in and tell the Rat his ride was here.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for Hero:
 
“[N]othing Mike Lupica has written will thrill you like this.” –William Goldman, author of The Princess Bride
 
“Sportswriter and novelist Lupica offers a change of pace from his previous sports stories for younger readers, deftly reworking the traditional superhero origin story into a moving tale of adolescent growth.” –Publisher’s Weekly
 
“[T]he stage is set for a sequel to what looks like a surefire hit.” –School Library Journal

Editorial Reviews

Sportswriter and novelist Lupica (Million-Dollar Throw) offers a change of pace from his previous sports stories for younger readers, deftly reworking the traditional superhero origin story into a moving tale of adolescent growth. Shortly after his father dies in a plane accident, 14-year-old Zach Harriman discovers that his father was more than just a highly placed government adviser; he might have been a superhero. As he investigates his father's death, he meets an old man named Mr. Herbert, who claims that Zach has magic within him, and Zach soon discovers that the mild hints of power he'd shown--a sixth sense about danger and an ability to heal quickly--are only the tip of the iceberg. Lupica nicely coaxes sympathy for characters who are immersed in privilege (only Zach's friend Kate, who lives with her housekeeper mother in Zach's huge Fifth Avenue apartment, doesn't exude wealth), instead focusing on Zach's grief, his conflicting emotions over his discoveries, and his uncertainty over who to trust. As superhero stories go, it follows a classic arc, but Lupica's characters avoid cliché. Ages 10–up. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Hero:
 
“[N]othing Mike Lupica has written will thrill you like this.” –William Goldman, author of The Princess Bride
 
“Sportswriter and novelist Lupica offers a change of pace from his previous sports stories for younger readers, deftly reworking the traditional superhero origin story into a moving tale of adolescent growth.” –Publisher’s Weekly
 
“[T]he stage is set for a sequel to what looks like a surefire hit.” –School Library Journal

From the Publisher

Gr 6–10—In a major departure from his YA sports fiction, the popular Lupica opts for a high-concept, high-octane action thriller. When the father he idolizes dies in a covert government operation, 14-year-old Billy Harriman is determined to find out who killed him, and why. In the course of his investigation he discovers that his father had superpowers, and that he has inherited them. Guided by a mysterious older man who identifies himself as Mr. Herbert, and supported by his wise and sassy girlfriend Kate, Billy begins to come to terms with his destiny. As his socially prominent mother assumes a leading role in the campaign of the presidential candidate his father had backed, Billy finds himself at odds with his father's old friend (and mother's current advisor). The teen eventually becomes convinced that Uncle John is allied with the forces responsible for his father's death. After he uses his superpowers to thwart an assassination attempt on the candidate, he confronts Uncle John, who remains evasive about his involvement with the shadowy organization that seems to have targeted Billy and his family. With all the major issues unresolved at the novel's end, the stage is set for a sequel to what looks like a surefire hit.—Richard Luzer, Fair Haven Union High School, VT

School Library Journal

When Zach Harriman’s father dies, Zach learns two things: His dad was the world’s secret superhero, and now he, Zach, is expected to take over the role. His mentors torture him with cryptic advice, in the best Harry Potter tradition, rather than just telling him what’s going on. Narrator Dan Bittner sounds believable as a 14-year-old kid and is even passable as a young girl. Zach’s aged mentor is also credible, as is his “uncle,” who may or may not be evil. Bittner makes the book exciting, even though it’s a mere introduction to the character, who is only beginning to understand his great strength and speed by the end of the work. The next installment of HERO may see Zach live up to the role. M.S. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2010 - AudioFile

In a trendy fantasy that's probably stand-alone but reads like an overblown series setup, a teenager finds himself endowed with superpowers. After the death (presumed, there being pointedly no mention of a corpse) of his secret-agent father, Billy's grief turns to anger and confusion when two men—one a close family friend, the other a strange, old man who reads minds and can appear and vanish at will—start laying urgent but conflicting and maddeningly cryptic messages on him involving a coming challenge from "the Bads." Suddenly he's being repeatedly attacked by street hoodlums, but, thanks to previously unsuspected martial-arts skills, new superfast reflexes and other powers, he both fends off the thugs and proves ready for a climactic save when an assassin targets a presidential candidate. Nonetheless, not only is there more angst than action here, but, among many signs of patchwork plotting, the real agendas of the men haranguing Billy remain murky and Lupica establishes but then abruptly drops an important character. Readers will be left scratching their heads and wondering when the story will get under way. (Fantasy. 11-13)

Kirkus Reviews