This week’s topic was “escape” and this book couldn’t be more suitable for that. Percy keeps escaping monsters and mythological figures, as well as death. The first time I read this, I had read it in Greek when I was about 11-12 years old and I absolutely loved it. It was fun revisiting it now that I’m older, and reading it in English because I gained new insights. I thought the story was quite cliché, a boy who is utterly oblivious as to what his blood really is – a demigod. My favourite cliché quote has got to be “The real world is where the monsters are.”(Riordan, 2005). It’s just something that comes forward in so many stories where the world is at stake. But let’s move on.
When I discussed this book with a classmate, the first thing we looked at was age group. Percy Jackson himself is 12 years old in this book, we find that out firsthand on the very first page of the book “My name is Percy Jackson. I am twelve years old.” (Riordan, 2005). This puts Percy in the 5th stage of Erikson’s psychosocial development. In the story we see that Percy is struggling with himself as he thought he knew himself to be, just a regular kid who has ADHD and weird visions. But once he finds out he is a demigod, it becomes much more challenging for him to find what each young adult in that stage strives for, a sense of self and identity (Erikson, n.d.).
We found that this book is excellent for young adults ranging from the age of 12 to 16. At first we wanted to rule out that young adults over the age of 16 would like to read this book but according to Appleyard (1991) most voluntary reading done is largely fiction and mostly novels – mystery, adventure, romance, historical fiction and sci-fi.
But say a young adult non-native picked up this book, it could be quite challenging. There are abundant Greek mythology terms in there that they would have to look up. Moreover, the sentence structure is quite complex from time to time for a second language learner. So in the class discussion, we concluded that this book would be best discussed in a HAVO class, where students are more skilled in their use and understanding of the language.
The characters in this book are very likeable. Percy is a bit awkward and is trying to find his way in this new life he’s suddenly found himself in. His friend Grover is a total sweetheart who only has Percy’s best interest and had tried to protect him from day one. Annabeth is this cool girl, tough looking on the outside and has a refreshing depiction in the few clichés in this novel. Now let’s look at the adults. Percy’s mother kind of comes off as a pushover at the start, she’s married to an alcoholic loser who is Percy’s stepfather. Later on though, we find out she’s done this because that was a way to cover Percy’s demigod scent. As her character develops, we see she is very caring and has gone to long lengths to provide Percy with an as normal as possible life for as long as possible. Chiron is the closest to a father figure that Percy could get and he is extremely likeable for his ways and his snarky remarks. “Chiron looked surprised. “I thought that would be obvious enough. The entrance to the Underworld is in Los Angeles.” (Riordan, 2005).
As cliché as I found this book to be from time to time, it really is a captivating story. The setting changes consistently, which keeps it interesting and according to Appleyard (1991) a changing setting is seen a lot in children’s books. There’s also a pattern in this book, where Percy receives new information and has to process that, then once that’s all settled and he’s developed a new power he discovers – there’s a whole new load of information.
Overall, I like this book. Cliché stories aren’t necessarily bad stories. I wouldn’t recommend it to my current students, seeing though they are 12 years old and still very ill skilled in the English language.
Literature II: Marianna's blog 