Rick Riordan - Demigods and Monsters

Boy are they surprised.

Still not convinced that monster retail is actually a positive thing? Let’s take a look at The Sea of Monsters , The Titan’s Curse , The Battle of the Labyrinth , and The Last Olympian for a moment. Those are Percy Jackson and the Olympians books two, three, four, and five. Not very many retail opportunities here, you say? (With the exception of Monster Donut in The Sea of Monsters , my second favorite monster retail opportunity of all time, in case you’re counting.)

Aha! I reply. That’s just my point. By the time The Sea of Monsters rolls around, Percy’s beginning to get the point. He’s learned the lesson all those shopping opportunities were trying to teach: Keep your eyes off the merchandise and on the quest-related prize.

The fact that Percy’s learned to do this makes him much more dangerous, of course. Which is also why the fighting stakes get higher as the series goes along. The monsters have learned their lesson as well. No more trying to sidetrack the hero. Luring Percy off the track just isn’t going to cut it anymore. Just keep coming at him head-on until you take the sucker out.

Fortunately, they haven’t managed by the end of The Last Olympian (not for lack of persistence). But who turns out to have been spearheading the efforts to get rid of our hero? Who is his gone-over-to-the-dark-side counterpart? That’s right. It’s Luke, the threat Percy almost didn’t recognize in time.

This is quite a clever sleight of hand on the author’s part, if you stop to think about it. Because it puts the heart of an enemy—a monster, if you will—behind the face of a friend. This makes all Percy’s encounters with Luke (and Annabeth’s too, come to think of it) dangerous not just physically, but emotionally as well.

When you fight a friend who’s turned into an enemy, you risk destruction not just of who you are in the present, but who you’ve been in the past. Why? Because you have to battle both your adversary, and your own remorse for having been fooled in the first place. This is part of what makes Percy’s relationship with Luke so powerful. He genuinely liked the guy, though it must be admitted that Luke wasn’t always the “monster” he turns out to be. There’s an awful lot of Kronos-control going on. But why does that happen? Because Luke lets it, that’s why. He’s got free will, but he exercises it by giving it up. And maybe that’s the true definition of a monster. A being who could have been something else, then chooses not to.

It’s enough to make a hero nostalgic for the days of freaky garden statuary and killer waterbeds. Surely facing a monster that can turn you into stone is easier than staring into the face of someone you used to trust and then raising your sword. Because when you do that, there’s always the chance your own feelings can be turned into a weapon to be used against you.

Let’s face it. Monsters who wear the faces of friends play serious hardball.

Luckily, in the end, Percy beats the pretty big odds he’s placed up against. But whatever he faces next, I think we can all be certain of at least one thing: No matter where the next adventure in his destiny leads, Perseus Jackson will not be taking along any Ancient Greek gift cards.

Cameron Dokey has more than thirty young people’s titles to her credit, including Once , Winter’s Child , The World Above , Wild Orchid , Belle , Before Midnight , Sunlight and Shadow , Beauty Sleep , Golden , and The Storyteller’s Daughter , all for the Once Upon a Time series. She’s also proud of the romantic comedy How Not to Spend Your Senior Year . You can see all Cameron’s titles and find out more about her at www.camerondokey.com.

Would you want to be Percy Jackson? At the beginning of The Lightning Thief, Percy is pretty adamant that you should never wish to be a half-blood. It’s simply too dangerous. And yet, don’t we all wish we could uncap a pen and see Riptide appear? Don’t you sometimes wish you could confront monsters as bravely as a demigod would? Paul Collins explores why this idea is so appealing and why there might be a little Percy in all of us.

Growing up is dangerous. Being yourself is dangerous.

In the classic Australian film, Strictly Ballroom , the chief character, Scott, wants to dance his own steps and wants to do it his way. And all Hades breaks loose!

Scott’s attempts at becoming an individual, at becoming himself , are seen as a crime, an act of rebellion, against the social “group” of which he is a member because Scott is not fitting in; he’s not conforming .

Well, neither is Percy Jackson.

Percy is dyslexic, has Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and is always getting into trouble. In most school systems, and society at large, that pretty much makes Percy a loser, the kid least likely to succeed, the kind of kid who’ll never amount to anything and isn’t worth the effort anyway. Ever heard that one before?

Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson series, turns these so-called flaws on their heads.

Like many kids in his position—labeled a misfit, looked down upon, shoved to the side lines—Percy feels shut out, left behind, and is beginning to feel frustrated and anxious about it. He can’t work out why some of the teachers always pick on him, why things always go wrong even when he tries his hardest to do the right thing.

Of course, once you’ve been stuck with a label—like dyslexic, disruptive, troublemaker—it’s pretty hard to change things back, because you’re dealing with people’s perceptions . They don’t see “you” anymore; they just see the label.

In its own way, The Lightning Thief is a classic “Rags to Riches” plot, a type of story we’ve heard over and over again since early childhood: The Ugly Duckling , Cinderella , Aladdin , King Arthur, Star Wars, David Copperfield , Jane Eyre , Harry Potter, Rocky , the biblical Joseph and his brothers, and many, many more. They are all essentially stories about growing up, about coming into the power and responsibility of adulthood, and about the dark forces that try to stop them. They begin, usually, with a child or youthful hero/heroine who is often an orphan or part orphan (like Aladdin, Percy has “lost” a father) and who has been marginalized, forced to live in the shadows like Cinderella: neglected, scorned, undervalued, overlooked, and mistreated.

This story is found in every culture and every time, including that of the North American Indians prior to the arrival of the Europeans and as far back as ninth-century China (and there is no reason to think that that was its first occurrence).

So why is this particular plot so important to us? What is it really about?

Well, I’ll tell you. It’s about rebellion.

It’s about people growing up and becoming themselves . Just as Scott tries to do in Strictly Ballroom , just as Harry Potter tries and every person who has ever lived has tried. Just as a fair few of the heroes and heroines of Greek myths have tried.

And this is no accident.

The gods of Olympus—all-powerful, simultaneously good and bad, unpredictable, oddly human in their flaws—are stand-ins not only for the establishment (school, society, church) but also for those other godlike beings: parents.

Rick Riordan has rightly seen this and created a story about the children of the gods, who are in precisely the same power relationship to their very-much-alive-and-kicking gods as children in our world are to their parents. And this, I think, is one of the secrets to the success of the series: It mimics the experience of everyone growing up—and of every person’s troublesome need to become him- or herself.