Response to Alexie, Writing About Writing, pp. 128-132
Help Received: None
For my birthday one year, my grandmother gave me the first book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. It tells the story of Percy Jackson, a dysfunctional child who finds out that he is the son of the Greek god Poseidon and that he is a member of a highly elite race of demigods (half-god, half-human). I quickly became engrossed in this series, and continued to read it and the follow-up series into my high school years. The books, while obviously fiction, did contain elements of the true ancient Greek mythology and I became well-versed in the world of the Greek gods. Later in my academic career, when we studied Greek/Roman mythology in high school, I already knew the names of the major gods and other mysterious creatures that made up this mysterious, old religion.
It could be said that the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series contributed to my literacy in the mythological field. Better yet, it’s completely responsible for my literacy in that it sparked the almost decade-long interest in Greek Mythology.