Stories about national heroes are essential for teaching history and understanding the concept of heroism in Indonesian society. However, picturebooks effectively capturing their significance remain scarce. This study aims to reconstruct national hero narratives in picturebooks and investigate elementary school students’ responses to them. We employed a research and development approach with ADDIE design (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) focusing on five heroes from Aceh Province. 62 elementary school students from Aceh Province were involved as participants. Their responses of reading the books were gathered through classroom observations, artefacts, and interviews. The results of qualitative analysis shows that our picturebooks foster the students’ critical engagement with Aceh history and culture. The students were able to interpret the texts dynamically, drawing connections between textual information, visual images, fictional elements, and historical concepts. This highlights the potential of picturebooks to enrich historical teaching and learning in complex and meaningful ways.