The hero of Heart lessons is one Michael Prescott, a student in a comprehensive Chicago high school, who keeps a diary of the events that he observes both at home and in school. Michael is no angel; he can be cowardly, lazy, disloyal, self-centered, and judgmental. But by the end of the school year he has learned a few things and is on his way to becoming the guy with the "big heart." Every month Michael's class is required to read a story in which the main character encounters a life crisis and must make a life-defining decision. It is in the classroom discussions of these stories that Michael's classmates reveal who they really are: their prejudices and fears, their loves and hatreds and so on.