Real Life Heroes Storybook is a resiliency masterpiece. Built on the historical Hero Archetype, Dr. Kagan invites traumatized children to acknowledge their courage, express their sorrow, and embrace the hero’s path to healing. Real Life Heroes Storybook provides creative resiliency based interventions that guide traumatized children through their pain into recovery by discovering and utilizing their internal strengths and significant personal relationships to overcome adversity and become the real heroes of their own lives.”—James Henry, PhD, director, Western Michigan University Children's Trauma Assessment Center
“The third edition of the Real Life Heroes Storybook is an impressive continuation of Dr. Kagan’s already long list of contributions to supporting stronger, healthier, and more resourced outcomes for young people who have experienced traumatic stress. Through the use of ritual, psychoeducation, expressive strategies, skill-building, narrative, and relational engagement, the workbook provides a powerful tool to promote healing in trauma-impacted youth. The language in the workbook is child, caregiver, and provider-friendly, and the facilitated process of self-examination is empowering rather than pathologizing. Dr. Kagan truly believes that every child and every caregiver has the potential to be a hero—and that “heroism” is often found in every day actions—and this vision shines through in his work.”—Margaret Blaustein, PhD, co-author, Treating Traumatic Stress in Children and Adolescents; The Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute
“Real Life Heroes Life Storybook and Toolkit provides an effective step by step process for clinicians and caregivers to guide children and family members in making sense of the pain in their lives that is due to past trauma. The process provided in RLH is comprehensive in its treatment components. However, what'strikes me most is how RLH very tenderly and carefully enables the survivor to recognize that their memories and the subsequent resulting emotions move / fluctuate and will need some anchoring based in the reality of their innocence. In addition, RLH enables practice for survivors in how to effectively handle the sensory based triggers that will assault them in the future. I unequivocally recommend both Real Life Heroes Life Storybook and Toolkit for practitioners.”—William E Painter Jr, MS, senior director, Clinical Practice, Child and Family Center of Excellence, Institute for Family Centered Services / The Mentor Network
"Providing a step-by-step process through which to guide children, the information and activities in this book can help build/rebuild a sense of safety, enhance supportive relationships and attachments and start to generate hope and positivity for the future. (...) for those who are committed to engaging in this therapeutic process with a child, this book is an excellent resource for doing so." - Youthinmind
5 Stars! from Doody
Reviewer: Nicholas Greco IV, MS, BCETS, CATSM (Columbia College of Missouri)
Description: This supplementary workbook to the author's book, Rebuilding Attachments with Traumatized Children: Healing from Losses, Violence, Abuse, and Neglect, is an excellent way for parents and clinicians to help rebuild the connections with traumatized children and promote a sense of needed permanency.
Purpose: The purpose is to provide a variety of ways in which children aged 6-12 can express themselves through drawings, writings, crafts, posters, etc. It is through this expression, with the support of both therapist and parent or caring adult, that the child's wounds can begin to heal. These worthy and commendable objectives are met.
Audience: Intended mainly for use under the supervision of licensed mental health practitioners (psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers), the book is intended for children aged 6-12 and their parents or caregivers to implement in their treatment. The author's credibility and experience is without question.
Features: The book explores the child's own image of self and of those around him and her. Notably, the workbook looks at what the child considers to be a hero and what a hero means to the child. Children are given opportunities to look back, look to the present, and look to the future. There a number of fill-in-the-blank items and opportunities to draw feelings, images, and thoughts, all of which allow children to safely explore their pain and ultimately be able to process it.
Assessment: This one of the best, most caring workbooks I have seen. The need and benefit that such a workbook will provide to traumatized children is beyond words, yet the author has been able to capture those words and produce an invaluable therapeutic tool. Highly commendable and highly recommended!
