50 REAL HEROES FOR BOYS

Profiles of achievers, mostly of the present or recent past, focusing on character traits that make them worthy role models.

Aside from tricking biased readers into picking this up, there is no reason to brand it as “for boys”—not only because 15 of the chosen figures are or were women, but also because all were chosen as exemplars of one or more of 20 “Special Powers” unrelated to sex, such as “compassion,” “creativity,” “intelligence,” and “perseverance.” Along with such usual suspects as Jackie Robinson, Abraham Lincoln, and Malala Yousafzai, the arbitrarily ordered roster mines less-picked-over ground, from William Tyndale, who translated the New Testament into English and was burned at the stake for it, to, more recently, Yasuteru Yamada, organizer of a corps of senior citizens volunteering to help clean up the Fukushima nuclear facility. The lineup is less notable for its diversity, though it does include 15 people of color. Each receives a two-page profile that extols their virtues (not always uncritically: Lincoln “sacrificed his life, along with 620,000 others, for the future of the United States”) and urges readers to find ways of practicing said virtues in their own lives. Each also comes with a heavily stylized likeness. There are no source notes.

Wears its agenda on both rolled-up sleeves, but it’s set apart by the admixture of unfamiliar names.