The Hero's Mask: Helping Children with Traumatic Stress

Teachers, counselors, therapists, parents and caregivers can use this engaging novel and guidebook to help to promote resilience within children, families and communities that have experienced traumatic stress.

The novel encourages children to learn about everyday heroes and what helps them to succeed despite adversity. The accompanying guidebook provides practical advice and strategies for using the novel in classrooms, counselling, therapy and families to spark conversations around difficult topics of loss and trauma and to strengthen and renew emotionally supportive relationships for distressed children.

These two books provide a toolkit for helping children and caring adults understand the impact of traumatic stress and what can help them to recover and increase resilience after stressful experiences. Together, the novel and guidebook inspire hope for those who feel alone, fearful or ashamed after traumatic experiences and show how children, parents, and other caring adults can become stronger than the nightmares of the past.

This set includes:



The Hero’s Mask, a short novel designed to encourage young people to share and understand their feelings related to traumatic stress and to learn how family members, friends, neighbours and schools can help each other to survive hard times and learn to thrive again.

The Hero’s Mask Guidebook: Helping Children with Traumatic Stress, a practical resource for use by teachers, counselors, therapists, parents and caregivers that promotes an understanding of trauma and strengthens emotionally supportive relationships to reduce traumatic stress reactions.This essential resource provides a resiliency-focused guide for promoting trauma-informed schools and child and family services to help children and families experiencing traumatic stress.