Why Percy Jackson and the Olympians?

HELLO!!! This week I will be spilling out my thoughts on Rick Riordan and his first children’s book series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, while listening to YMCA by the Village People. However, I don’t know if you are familiar with Rick Riordan so I will be sharing some information I found out about him before I start talking about his books.

So, for about fifteen years Rick Riordan taught English and history at public and private middle schools in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Texas. While he was a teacher, he started writing mystery novels for adults, such as his multi-award winning Tres Navarre series. He then turned to writing children’s fiction when he started the Lightning Thief as a bedtime story for his oldest son. He then wrote a sequel to the Lightning Thief and turned it into a series. He then started working on the Heroes of Olympus series and the Kane Chronicles series. There are now over 35 million copies of his Percy Jackson, Heroes of Olympus, and Kane Chronicles books in print in the United States, and rights have been sold into more than 35 countries. Rick Riordan is also the author of The 39 Clues: The Maze of Bones, which is another #1 New York Times bestseller. In 2011, he received the Children’s Choice Book Award for Author of the year. He now writes full-time and lives in Boston with his wife and two sons.

One more thing I feel the need to mention is that his last name, Riordan, is pronounced Rye’-er-dan. If you still don’t understand how to pronounce it, try to make it rhyme with fireman, and if it does, then you are pronouncing his last name correctly. I wanted to mention this because my friends and I always disagreed on how to pronounce it, so I felt the urge to search it up and share it with you, so that you can clear up any highly unlikely disagreements with your friends on how to pronounce his last name.

          Now that I’ve given you a little bit of background on Rick Riordan, I’ll begin to share my feelings on the first children’s fiction series he wrote, Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

                                 
                                              

(These are the five books in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan)

http://caughtwithinpages.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/percyjackson-and-olympians.jpg

I own all of Rick Riordan’s children’s fiction books. I have probably read all of his book series at least 5 times in the past 2 years and I still don’t get tired of the books and his writing. I greatly admire his style of writing and the way he used his imagination to come up with the stories that several pre-teens and teenagers read all over the United States and in other places around the world. Whenever I’m reading one of his books, I get so caught up in the story that I almost always feel as if I am actually one of the characters in the book and I feel as if whatever I am reading about is actually happening. For example, if something sad happens, like in the Last Olympian when Silena Beauregard died, I get a sad feeling deep inside me or if something happy and exciting like when Percy and Annabeth share that underwater kiss, I get all happy. Anyways, I really enjoyed this series and I think that you will too.

Rating for The Lightning Thief - 9.5

Rating for The Sea of Monsters -  9    

Rating for The Titan’s Curse - 8.8

Rating for The Battle of the Labyrinth - 9.5

Rating for The Last Olympian - 9.5

Do I recommend this series – YES!!! (for both boys and girls ages 9+)