Grown Up with Percy Jackson

Back in 2006, just a few months after starting this blog, I commented on Rick Riordan’s first Percy Jackson novel.

I wasn’t a big fan. I recognized Riordan’s power to create exciting scenes, and obviously many people love the series. But for me the book seemed too quick to assure readers that Percy’s difficulties were all because he was special, and to assure Americans they were the most special of all.

But damn if this detail from Riordan’s recent interview with Publishers Weekly didn’t make me happy:

My older son, Haley, has ADHD and dyslexia, and was the impetus for Percy Jackson when he was eight or nine years old. I started telling him a bedtime story, and everything came from that. He needed a story that would tell him that it was okay, that seeing the world differently, processing information differently is okay, and can be a sign of strength. And my son just got his master’s degree in higher education with a certificate in learning disabilities.

They Grow Up So Fast

Back in 2007, I shared this photo of Godson’s Brother. It so captured the intensity of reading that a literacy organization contacted me to ask the photographer (Godson’s Mother) about using it in a report.

This is the latest photo of Godson’s Brother, on his way to the cricket pitch.

“The gates of magic were open to everyone…”

This afternoon I happened to be thinking about how L. Frank Baum portrayed Dorothy in his Oz books as an “ordinary little girl,” not inherently magical or unlike her readers. Of course, if she got her hands on the Magic Belt, watch out!

That presents a world of possibility fundamentally different from what’s proffered in series like Susan Cooper’s Dark Is Rising, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, and Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson. Those portray an innate, unbreachable divide between people who can work magic and those who can’t.

Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus books depict a situation in between, a world where some people are have natural magical aptitude but—to the magicians’ dismay—“ordinary” humans can break the barrier.

This evening I found that novelist David Liss has been pondering the same issues in an essay at io9:

In my research, what I found most interesting was how common and ordinary magic was to people in the past. There was also dark and mysterious magic, which was part of a hidden world populated by unknowable beings, but mostly there was ordinary, routine magic that was incorporated into everyday life. It was part of this world and part of nature, and most people didn't trouble themselves too much with how or why it worked. That it did work was taken for granted.

In the past, people generally believed they could acquire magic in two ways: through learning the craft, either from another practitioner or from books; or through obtaining magic from a powerful being-think Faust or the classic, demonized witch, both of whom get their mojo from Satan. Anyone could learn magic as long as he or she had access to the knowledge or could make a connection with the right supernatural entity. The important point is that in theory, the gates of magic were open to everyone, and what I find most interesting is how that has changed in popular culture. . . .

Magic has gone from being an open system to a closed one. Their massive popularity make the Harry Potter novels and films the most glaring example, but it's everywhere, and has been for decades now: TV shows like Charmed and Wizards of Waverly Place, books like those of Laurell K. Hamilton and Charlaine Harris. More often than not, magical practitioners are born, not made. Magic is an exclusive club. You can watch and be envious, but you can't join.

I can't prove it, but I strongly suspect the turning point is the TV show Bewitched.

Of course, that show was inspired by the 1942 film I Married a Witch, itself adapted from the novel The Passionate Witch, and the 1958 film Bell, Book, and Candle. All three use innate magic as a metaphor for the power a woman might sacrifice in marrying. The theme of innate, unobtainable powers has been around for a long time. What may be new is the dominance of one approach over others.

In response to Liss’s essay, Alyssa Rosenberg at Think Progress writes, “I wonder if a sense of biological magic also correlates to a sense of unease about how much power we have to impact our lives and to change the world”—by which she means how little power. Of course, kids fantasize about getting the call to Hogwarts or Camp Half-Breed, not being left behind.

Greek Myth Graphics as a Gateway

At the Graphic Classroom, Chris Wilson wrote recently about using comics about Greek mythology as a way of buttering up elementary-school students for Rick Riordan's first Percy Jackson novel, based on that mythology. The strategy worked--for some students:

I introduced my comics to the students in my student teaching class early in the semester. I had an entire box filled with Greek mythology from Lerner Publishing [Graphic Legends and Myths series].

At first, only one fourth grade student--a boy in the gifted program--picked them up. It was on my recommendation and I thought he would enjoy them. . . . It was not long until I had a group of nearly 10 boys reading Greek myth. The girls, except one, were uninterested.

When we finished our daily read-aloud book, I introduced The Lightning Thief to the class. Instantly, the boys became so excited when the story mentioned Perseus, the Minotaur, Medusa, Zeus and other Greek characters. So excited in fact, that they would often interrupt the read-aloud to share what they knew about the characters. There were times when they would stand up and shout and flap their hands.

Fourth grade boys
Shouting
About literature

I could not keep my Greek myth comics in stock. They were in backpacks and on desks and in hands, some even read during recess.

I soon left the classroom to begin my rotations. When I came back four weeks later, I discovered the kids had finished The Lightning Thief. Many of the boys had gone on to check out the next book from the library or purchased it from the Scholastic book fair.

I sat down with the students and asked them about it. The boys were almost uncontrollable in their excitement over both the comics and the novel. The girls, on the other hand, were not. I asked them about it.

They were confused.

The girls, you see, had not picked up the comics so they were very unfamiliar with the characters or the back-story. Thus, they were so-so on the book.

Just as the girls had been, for the most part, so-so on the comics. But might that have been because Greek myths--or at least those about heroes and monsters and gods hitting each other--hold more appeal for American boys no matter what format they come in?

Rick Riordan started the Percy Jackson stories to appeal to a boy--specifically, one of his sons. And according to this interview, that young Riordan already enjoyed Greek mythology.

Maybe someone could run Chris Wilson's experiment using comics and a novel thought to have more appeal for American girls, and see if the students' responses are reversed.

This anecdote also reminded me of a moment last summer when I was visiting Godson and his family in upstate New York. I had ended up with the largest bedroom in the house, more real estate than I could use, and I came back to that room one day to find all the kids playing inside. Godson's Brother had found the latest volume of Eric Shanower's Age of Bronze comics among my books and was intently studying the vast family tree at the front. The comics pages didn't draw him in as much as all those polysyllabic names.

(Pointer from Good Comics for Kids.)

Our Sunday Odyssey

We started Sunday morning in Bettendorf, Iowa, with plans to drive across Illinois and catch a 1:45 PM flight from Chicago through Cincinnati to Boston, landing by 7:30. Our plans gang agley.

When we returned the car to the rental agency, we learned out the desk agent two days before (who was, to be fair, covering for colleagues on their lunch hour) hadn't coded our order correctly. We'd asked to buy the car's tank of gas so we could return it close to empty. The agency wanted to charge us for a refill--at $7.38 a gallon.

We moved on to the American Airlines terminal at O'Hare and tried to check in through the self-service kiosk. (Yet another way corporations are turning clerical work over to customers to save personnel costs while giving us a deceptive sense of control.) I couldn't find our reservation in the system, or our flight. Then I realized that although I'd bought the tickets through American, the actual flight was on Comair, a Delta Connection airline.

So we trooped down the terminal to Delta and fed the same information into its self-serve computer. And it came up with...nothing. So we asked for help from the attendants. One of them quickly found our names on the computer behind the counter. I guess that reserving the seats through another airline had hurt the Delta program's feelings, so it was snubbing us.

The fully packed flight from Chicago to Cincinnati was an uneventful 50 minutes--which ate up 110 minutes by the clock since we moved east into a different time zone. (The return flight seems like a real time-saver since it touches down ten minutes earlier by the clock than it takes off, but I digress.)

In the Cincinnati airport (actually across the Ohio River in Kentucky), we found the Delta monitors reporting that our flight to Boston was at a gate different from the one stated on our boarding passes. So we went to the new gate, only to see the departure switched back to the original. Then that plane was late arriving because of bad weather elsewhere. When the plane arrived, Boston was socked in by lightning storms, so it couldn't load and take off.

Finally the pilot and crew hustled us all onto the plane in order to beat a 7:22 departure window. We rolled out to the runway, took a right, took another right, and rolled back to the terminal. Along the way, we all had a good look at how the sky out one set of windows was white while the sky on the opposite side of the plane was inky black.

The pilot told us there was no way he was taking off in that weather. Furthermore, he advised parents to carry small children when crossing the gangplank into the walkway because the wind had become so strong. And indeed it was whipping hard. There were also some tendrils hanging down from the dark cloud--not tornado funnels, to be sure, but close enough to be reminiscent.

And we weren't the only ones who thought so. Soon after we arrived back in the gate, the airport staff evacuated everyone in the facility down to the tunnels where one normally catches the trams from one terminal to another. I helped carry a lady's stroller down about fifty steps on a stopped escalator.

After another wait, we got the all-clear and went back upstairs. Lightning had struck the control tower, requiring its staff to shut down and restart their computers before the airport could reopen. It was unclear what had happened to our flight; the plane was still on the tarmac, but the gate desk was listing another city. I was checking the phone directory for local hotels when we got the word that our flight was still on. We were all hurried back to our old seats.

Did I mention that we were seated right in front of brothers aged five and seven, who had been on planes and in airports all day?

The flight to Boston had some bumpy moments, but would probably have been even bumpier if we hadn't button-hooked over Canada and approached Boston via Lake Winnipesaukee. But when we reached the terminal, we discovered that many other flights had come in at the same time. The baggage treadmill became overloaded and jammed, and had to be shut down and cleared at least twice.

It was nearly midnight when we got into a cab headed for the Ted Williams Tunnel--only to find its entrance blocked by a police car. But that blockage turned out to be a temporary; the driver merely had to drive over the bumpy divider to get back into the lane for the tunnel. We resurfaced on the Mass. Pike, and then the skies opened up again. Driving rain reduced visibility to the length of the taillights ahead. Deep puddles appeared in poorly draining roads. It was Monday as I struggled up our steps with the suitcases.

And it all could have been much worse. In fact, it wasn't really that bad.

At the rental agency, the desk agent and I worked out the best deal the computer allowed. The Comair pilot was straightforward about balancing speed and safety, and inspired confidence with his choices. The Cincinnati gate manager remained cheerful despite facing scores of anxious people and a 6:00 AM shift the next morning. None of us customers behaved badly, either. Everyone recognized that the problem was weather--not that that's stopped other airport crowds I've known from getting nasty.

The two little brothers were especially well behaved, considering. They and their parents seem to be temperamentally cheerful. We all got to listen in as their mother read them a chapter from a Percy Jackson book--the one about Percy and Annabeth having a difficult journey past the sirens.

Making Off with The Lightning Thief

On Friday, Ann Giles devoted her blog on the Guardian's website to "The best Aspie fiction," meaning books about and for young readers who have been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome.

Giles included Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (the Potterian British title for The Lightning Thief) on her short list of "great Asperger's fiction" for young readers. Separately she lists "books that aren't openly Aspie, but that have a real Aspie feel to them," writing, "Kate Thompson's book [The Last of the High Kings] is really about Irish fairies, but I suspect they are closet Aspies, just like Rick Riordan's American half gods."

Yet Riordan clearly didn't write about young people with Asperger's syndrome. His narrator, Percy Jackson, is explicit about the diagnoses he's received: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and dyslexia. In addition, he's a world-class wiseass. All of which he traces back to being son of a Greek god.

This morning a commenter called Giles on her choice of Riordan's book, writing, "I would say that while Rick Riordan's LIGHTNING THIEF series is meant to show ADHD and dyslexia; I've heard him speak and he did not mention Asperger's as a part of his books." Indeed, on his website Riordan states, "Making Percy ADHD/dyslexic was my way of honoring the potential of all the kids I've known who have those conditions."

To which Giles replied, "I agree about the Percy Jackson book, but ADHD is close to AS and I think the way the half god children feel different fits in just as well with Asperger's. It's that outsider feeling, being different, that readers need." But Giles didn't include Lightning Thief in her list of "books that aren't openly Aspie"; she included it on the main list and confidently stated that its heroes are "closet Aspies."

I disagree with Giles's comment that ADHD is "close to AS." The two diagnoses can overlap and be confused, but the whole point of separate diagnoses is to recognize each in order to allow the best understanding and treatment. Dr. R. Kaan Ozbayrak's Aspergers.com website notes, "DSM-IV prohibits diagnosing ADHD when there is PDD [a pervasive developmental disorder such as Asperger's] since all the ADHD symptoms can be attributed to PDD. Clinicians who overlook other symptoms of PDD tend to diagnose these children as ADHD." In other words, assuming kids with Asperger's syndrome actually have ADHD is a common mistake, and it's a mistake for doctors to treat children with Asperger's as if they had ADHD.

Giles apparently feels that "that outsider feeling" is all that's needed to define "Aspie fiction." But that feeling isn't confined to children with Asperger's traits, nor would they necessarily see themselves in any character who feels like an outsider. Percy Jackson shows no hallmarks of Asperger's syndrome. To claim that Riordan wrote about "closet Aspies" looks like projecting one's own concerns onto his work, neither respecting his characterization nor the distinct qualities of young people with Asperger's.

People, places, and things in The Lightning Thief

The Lightning Thief, by Texas author Rick Riordan, is a mighty satisfactory read--perhaps a little too satisfactory for my comfort. Acquired by the Miramax Books imprint and published by Disney's Hyperion wing, it will be an even more satisfactory movie since a lot of its scenes seem to have been composed with that medium in mind.

For example, narrator Percy Jackson tells us about a bus careening through a tunnel, scraping the walls and shooting out sparks behind--so cinematographic a scene that we might forget that Percy's inside the bus and shouldn't be able to see those sparks. There's a fight scene in the St. Louis Arch that offers great opportunity for special effects and stunts, but for the life of me I can't recall why on their world-saving mission the characters stopped in St. Louis.

But that's not the end to the book's reassurance for readers. Percy announces at the outset that he's been diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and dyslexia. He has a horrible family life, most of his teachers dislike him, and minor calamities and accidents seem to plague him.

The Lightning Thief soon reveals that all these things result from Percy being a son of a Greek god. He has trouble reading English because he's a natural at reading ancient Greek. (It's not clear whether this means the right-to-left script that's even more ancient than classical Greek.) His ADHD comes from having superhuman awareness. Riordan's website offers a tongue-in-cheek "Ten Signs You Might Be a Half-Blood" with the same message.

Furthermore, monsters have been after Percy his whole life, causing those calamities. One of his teachers really is out to kill him, and his mother stays married to a louse to protect him from other monsters. Even Percy's self-destructive impulsiveness (i.e., being a wise ass), he eventually decides, is due to his deistic/genetic heritage. (Hey, maybe that's a sign that I'm a half-blood, too!) In recovery-movement parlance, Percy can fob off all his troubles as "people, places, and things."

And that's not all. The book offers similar reassurance to Americans as a whole. In this fiction, George Washington was actually a son of Athena, and the Allied leaders in World War 2 were mostly sons of Zeus and Poseidon. In contrast, Hitler, the other Axis leaders, and (at least by implication) Osama bin Laden were sons of Pluto, god of the dead. Bowing to modern western sensibilities, this book portrays Pluto and Ares as scary and evil (and, in the latter case, stupid), though to the people who created them millennia ago death and war were inevitable parts of human existence, neither good nor bad though often regrettable.

To top it all off, the USA is now the heart of "western civilization," the current site of Mount Olympus and the other sites of the Greek gods. No matter that "western civilization" after the Roman Empire moved to Constantinople was for several centuries a repudiation of the Greek classical tradition, and that Arab scholars preserved the great Greek writings while Europeans knew them only as legends. Or that several western countries would probably acknowledge America's military and economic strength, but question our cultural leadership. We are, after all, the country of Diet Coke and Double-Stuff Oreos, and The Lightning Thief assures us that those are foods fit for the Greek gods.