Every October, I love to focus on heroes for my Morning Basket theme in homeschool. Morning Basket time is when I share what is good, true, and beautiful. More here. I wish I had figured this out more when all my children lived at home. This is what it looks like: get picture book biographies of famous heroes as well as everyday heroes and read them aloud every morning for homeschooling time after morning prayers, scripture reading, and the breakfast dishes are cleaned up with the children’s help.

Then talk about how the person is a hero and how to apply that in our own lives. That helps set the focus of the month of October so that Halloween can be Heroween. Throughout this post I’m sharing some of my favorite picture books, and graphic novels, of heroes. I’m also sharing photos of my recent hike. More on that in a little bit.

I’m all for dressing up like real heroes from history who have helped create a “harvest of faith,” then having a party where people share clues and guess who each other is. The fullest extent to this that I’ve done is hosting a Heroween party for my Quest homeschooling class, and then a bonfire party at my home where some homeschooling friends gathered, dressed up as heroes. As we made s’mores, I shared stories from the October section of my Family Devotionals ebook about everyday people who are heroes. Heroes follow the Hero’s Journey, which ultimately was set forth by our Savior Jesus Christ.

It’s great to hear and read stories of famous people who are heroes. (See a list of picture book biographies here and scroll down on Sarah Mackenzie’s page here for ideas.) It’s important to give equal time to people who aren’t famous and just as heroic. Like people who go to work everyday, working menial and/or thankless jobs, so that our society functions. I’m talking about garbage collectors, letter carriers, custodians, factory workers, teachers, store employees, nurses, construction workers, caregivers, parents (especially stay-at-home moms) etc. It’s harder to find picture books about those often invisible people.

In one of my current favorite blogs, which is Holladay Happenins’, the precursor to singlemomonafarm.com, Marcie, mom of 10, the “Single Mom on a Farm,” shares how one of her sons, when he was younger, before they lived on their farm in Virginia, but in the suburbs of SLC, UT, had a fascination for garbage trucks.

So every week when the garbage truck came by, Marcie and her children would go out to watch the truck driver do his job and say “Hi” to him. Sometimes they gave him treats. He came to love their family and their appreciation. He was so sad when they moved to Virginia. Before the move, they found out that he decided to go on a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because of a hitchhiker he picked up from Virginia. I want to know the rest of the story!!! So interesting!!!! Amazing!!! Garbage truck drivers are heroes. What would we do without them?

We live among so many heroes, both famous and not famous, the unsung heroes who plod along doing humdrum work without complaint. Yesterday in church, I heard two talks that made me think more about this. First was a talk by a woman named Jane. (She happens to be my children’s second cousin but that is beside the point, just so interesting. First we moved here, then over a year later, she and her husband and two children moved here without any communication or coordination. I’ve enjoyed getting to know her and her little family. Her mom is my husband’s cousin.) Sister/Cousin Jane shared the story of how when her family moved across the country to our neighborhood two years ago, they left a wonderful school with a great kindergarten that her son had just participated in. After they left, the school shut down.

It was just recently that Jane learned that her son, for the whole previous two years, had thought that the school shut down because his family moved and wasn’t able to function without his family paying tuition. She said how amazing that was that she, as his mother, the person closest to him, didn’t know he had that misconception. She then said how amazing it is that children can be told the truth, but somehow in their brains, they misconstrue the facts. Then they go about laboring under misconceptions. Then she compared that to all of us. All of us are children of Heavenly Father and sometimes, just like physically little children, we have misconceptions we are walking around with. So how does that relate to heroes? Heroes are people who somehow do something or say something to help us clear up our misconceptions so we can live more joyful lives, living the truth. They do this as they are living their ordinary lives.

Then Brother Ron told the story about how he once went hiking. He wanted to go hiking around the mountain in Pleasant Grove UT that has the “G” on the side. So he decided to go hike up Battle Creek Trail, find a connecting trail to Grove Creek Trail, and hike back down, on Grove Creek Trail, on the other side of the mountain.

Coincidentally, I just hiked up and back down Grove Creek Trail! It was two Tuesdays ago with some friends on a Wild Edibles Hike. So the photos of nature you see on this post of are from that hike. I have a Veggie Gal girlfriend whose husband is passionate about plants. He was excited to to share with us about local edibles.

Anyway, Brother Ron missed the turn-off to get to Grove Creek Trail. He ended up hiking for a much longer time. His feet started hurting to the point where he felt he was dying. He sat down and prayed, asking God to please help him get home. Soon a man named Larry came by with a truck and gave him a ride out down the mountain. Ron talked about how God somehow knew Ron would need help and sent Larry, via a prompting of the Holy Ghost, out on his truck to go up the mountain, even though Larry didn’t know why he was going up the mountain. Larry was Ron’s hero that day. Ron talked about how today, God is prompting us to do things so that minutes from now, hours from now, even ten years or more from now, we can be prepared to act on promptings from the Holy Spirit to go rescue people who will be praying for help. It’s just amazing and wonderful to think about how God orchestrates all of our talents and capacities to be instruments in His hands, everyday heroes, to help those in need, throughout all time and space.

I think of how God prepared an ordinary single woman, still living in her childhood home in her 50s, who worked in her father’s watchmaking business, to save some Jews during WWII. He had prepared her for generations before as He answered the prayers issued in cottage meetings that her great-grandfather organized in the 1800s for the Jewish people to establish Zion. Corrie tells this story in her book, In My Father’s House.

As President Kimball once said:

Here are some of my favorite stories about not famous, everyday heroes.

–Walter Stover, a man who emigrated from Germany before WW2, and started out working in a mattress factory in the U.S. for $20 a week

–an unnamed woman standing in line at a grocery store (written by Stephanie Meyer, could this be the Stephanie Meyer of Twilight fame?)

–a boy who died of cancer at age 12

Want more hero stories? Go here to get my Celestial Family Devotionals Ebook and turn to the stories in the October section.

Want to learn some songs about Christian heroes? I’ve got some!

–Here’s one about Nephi of the Book of Mormon Another Testament of Jesus Christ.

–Here’s one about heroes from the Bible and Book of Mormon.

-Then here’s one about more scripture heroes with music by Janice Kapp Perry

Those are some examples of what’s in my Family Devotionals Ebook. Go here to get it with links to a ton more songs and stories!

Want to watch a fabulous movie about an everyday hero? Watch Greater! I love that it shows an ordinary “Clark Kent” type of guy, Brandon Burlesworth, who works diligently every day to overcome his obstacles and achieve his dreams. He is a hero because he testifies of Christ, reads his Bible every day, works hard, stands for truth, and inspires other people to work hard to achieve their dreams. It’s a true story!

Here are more ideas of what to watch in the days leading up to Heroween/Halloween.