The Lightning Thief Rules

It was shortly after the Christmas when she was eight, in the second grade, that the Lone Star Girl's obsession with Greek mythology, especially the twisted, fictionalized-for-modern-readers sort, began. She had been reading the Magic Shop books by Bruce Coville (except for The Skull of Truth which I found inappropriate) and had received the new one, Juliet Dove, Queen of Love for Christmas. By the end of December, it had her hooked on mythology.

That spring, she was chosen to do an independent study at her school and she chose to do it on the Trojan War. The weeks of research culminated in a presentation to her grade and to parents which included an impressive report, a poster and a puppet show, all delivered in a self-made toga. It was cool. Around that same time, the movie Troy came out, which I, of course, did not let her see. She found out about it, though, and was pretty ticked that I wouldn't let her go. Out of misplaced sympathy, I caved some and let her read Caroline Cooney's Goddess of Yesterday, a Trojan war novel that I knew perfectly well was way too mature for an eight-year-old. I still think it was a mistake to let her read it so young, but it instantly became her favorite book ever and has kept that lofty status over the years...until a few months ago.

The Lone Star Girl has read plenty of cool mythology stories in the intervening years, but although she greatly enjoyed Myth-O-Mania and others, none have held a candle to Goddess of Yesterday in her esteem until she read The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan this summer. It became her new favorite instantly and she has read it twice already (and looks forward to reading it again in school later this year when the class reads it during the fifth grade Greek mythology unit) and spent the summer hungering for a sequel. We found the new sequel last week and gave it to her yesterday. She finished it last night. She's sort of an obsession-girl.