A Hero Like You looks at everyday heroes and highlights qualities such as loyalty, compassion, resourcefulness, justice, and courage. The lyrical rhyme and relatable illustrations remind us that we all have the opportunity to be a hero by helping others, doing right and making the world a better place. "What the world needs is a hero like you!"

Presents fifty true stories of "real heroes", highlighting their courage, integrity, compassion, and leadership.

On the morning of December 7, 1941, Chief Aviation Ordnanceman John W. Finn, though suffering multiple wounds, continued to man his machine gun against waves of Japanese aircraft attacking the Kaneohe Bay Naval Station during the infamous Pearl Harbor raid. Just over three years later, as World War II struggled into its final months, a B-29 radioman named Red Erwin lingered near death after suffering horrific burns to save his air crew in the skies off Japan. They were the first and last of thirty U.S. Navy, Army, and Marine Corps aviation personnel awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions against the Japanese during World War II. They included pilots and crewmen manning fighters and dive bombers and flying boats and bombers. One was a general. Another was a sergeant. Some shot down large numbers of enemy aircraft in aerial combat. Others sacrificed themselves for their friends or risked everything for complete strangers. Who were these now largely forgotten men? Where did they come from? What inspired them to rise “above and beyond”? What, if anything, made them different? Virtually all had one thing in common: they always wanted to fly. They came from a generation that revered the aces of World War I, like Eddie Rickenbacker, the civilian flyer Charles Lindbergh, and the lost aviator Amelia Earhart—and then they blazed their own trail during World War II.

A boy asks his father for help after his teacher asks each of her pupils to name a veteran whom he or she knows. The boy soon discovers that many of the familiar people who work in his neighborhood are heroes who have served in the country's military.