A nine-year-old boy reflects on the heroes he's identified in his life, from religious figures to his relatives, while he and his father drive home on a snowy night.

An old man looks back on his boyhood idolization of a soldier he sees in the parade - until his hero is forced off the pedestal after trying to steal a prized horse from the boy's father.

A young boy grows up avoiding his abusive mother and idolizing two men in his life: his father and a boy in his class. But when both of his heroes betray him, he turns to his mother for comfort.

Eager to get his children to stop fighting, a father tells them a story about dragons and kings; things take a disappointing turn when the children realize that their father doesn't know the end of his own story.

On his sixth birthday, a young boy receives a surprise present that forever changes his perspective on life.

Two boys become friends after one of them displays unflinching honesty in the face of a tyrannical teacher. Ultimately, their friendship is destroyed when the same honesty robs the second boy of some of his childhood ignorance.

A young boy, haunted by nightmares, finds relief from his insomnia in an unexpected way.

In Vietnam War-era America, a young boy fills his days playing a “game” in which he reenacts his father’s battlefield death in Vietnam. But fun and games soon put his loved ones in real danger.

A rambunctious teenager with an inquisitive mind causes much grief for all his New England family and neighbors when he visits them in the summer of 1914, on the eve of World War I.

As a boy grows to adulthood in the years encompassing WWII, and his understanding of the world changes, so too does his perception of his schoolteacher father evolve from respectable teacher to embarrassing clown to free-spirited man.