The Lightning ThiefSynopsis: After being attacked by his teacher, Percy Jackson discovers that he is the son of a Greek god, Poseidon to be exact. Taken to Camp Half Blood, he meets others like himself and begins to train to battle the evil in the world, but before he can learn much, his skills are put to the test: he has to save his mom.
Citation: Riordan, Rick. The Lightning Thief. (2005). New York: Hyperion.
My thoughts: This is the best presentation of Greek mythology I think I have ever seen. Riordan perfectly balances the new with the old myths and spins an engaging tale. The movie wasn't that great, but the book (and its sequels) is one of my top recommends.
Library usage: You could have a costume party: Have everyone come as a Greek god/goddess. Or a program on myths with this tie-in.
Review:
If you want a young person to read a book, take a lesson from Rick Riordan and start it by warning readers to close the book right away and go back to their uninformed lives. This book will bring out the readers, especially the boys, with its fast pace and adventure. Good news for Greek mythology enthusiasts: the gods are alive and well in the United States.
Perseus (Percy) Jackson is a 12-year-old half-blood doing time at Yancy Academy, a school for troubled kids. He is unaware of his true identity until the truth reveals itself in unusual ways. After losing his mother, he ends up at a summer camp for half-bloods run by Dionysus (the god of wine) and is shown to his cabin by his former Latin teacher, who turns out to be a centaur. (There is a constant thread of connection between the real and surreal, apparent in the catchy chapter titles like "A God Buys Us Cheeseburgers.") Percy carries his bad boy image into the other world and becomes a suspect in the disappearance of Zeus's lighting bolt. He has many Olympic-size obstacles to overcome before he returns to his human life. But no worries, Camp Half-Blood enrolls campers every summer. Book Two is called The Sea of Monsters. Heather Rader, Teacher, Libn., Meadows Elem. Sch., Lacey, WA
J--Recommended for junior high school students. The contents are of particular interest to young adolescents and their teachers.
Rader, Heather. "Riordan, Rick. The lightning thief." Kliatt Sept. 2006: 34+. Literature Resource Center. Web.
Graceling
Synopsis: Katsa is marked with one blue eye and one green, the sign that she has a Grace, a special ability. Some people are graced with baking or dancing, but everyone knows Katsa's Grace: the ability to kill. Forced to work as a ruthless henchman for her uncle, the king, Katsa is repulsed by her own strength. Teaming up with Prince Po, she sets out to overthrow her uncle and discovers love, redemption, and the truth of her Grace along the way.
Citation: Cashore, Kristin. Graceling. (2008). New York: Graphia.
My thoughts: I was disappointed in the ending of this one. Katsa overcomes all of her fears except her fear of commitment. I was very annoyed that she would not marry Po, but rather clung to her silly misconceptions about marriage. I liked that she would travel and work, but I think (probably because I think morality should be in every book) that they should have gotten married. Great story though. If you liked, read Saavy.
Library usage: I would like to see this used as a way to get teens to explore their own "Grace." Get the bakers to show how well they cook. Or the fashionable how to dress. Get everyone to share their talent.
Review:
In a world of gossip girls, it is perhaps refreshing to have a teenage heroine who cuts off all her hair because it gets in her way; and Kristin Cashore's eccentric and absorbing first novel, ''Graceling,'' has such a heroine. Katsa is tough, awkward, beautiful and consumed by pressing moral issues. She is extremely serious; it could be said she lacks a sense of humor.
The story is set in a rich fantasy world where children born with extreme talents, called Graces, are ''Gracelings.'' These Gracelings occupy a vexed and complicated place in their kingdoms, as they are both shunned and respected by ordinary people and exploited by kings. Katsa's Grace happens to be murder.
She can kill a man with her bare hands. This peculiar talent is discovered when, as an 8-year-old, she accidentally kills a distant cousin who is leering at women servants and touching them. Her uncle, the king, recognizes the potential of Katsa's power and begins to train her. He turns his niece into his creature, his own private girl assassin, forcing her to do the dirty work of the court: wreaking vengeance on his enemies, subduing those who dare to defy him. As one might expect, the adult world in ''Graceling'' is irrational, whimsical, cruel -- the young people band together into a secret Council, which Katsa dreams up to protect the innocent and correct the sins of narcissistic kings.
Katsa comes from the tradition of heroines like Pippi Longstocking, who scandalize the adult world with impossible feats of physical strength like lifting a horse or fighting a pirate. Katsa gets into a brawl with a mountain lion and wins. She subdues an entire army of guards. In other words, she overturns every biological reality and cultural stereotype of feminine weakness, which is a large part of her charm. She is the girl's dream of female power unloosed.
On one of her secret missions, Katsa encounters another Graceling, Prince Po, who can read minds. He also happens to be extremely handsome. After a great deal of wrangling, Katsa finally frees herself from her tyrannical uncle, and together she and Po try to save his young cousin Princess Bitterblue from her pathologically insane father, King Leck, who is in possession of a dangerous and bewildering Grace. Many harrowing adventures ensue.
There is a touching ordinariness to these characters as they go about their work breaking arms and legs. Unable to fall asleep one night, Katsa ''listened to make sure no one woke. Normal. She wasn't normal.'' As in every self-respecting fantasy story, all the good characters, the ones we're supposed to like, are freaks and outcasts. Po admits: ''I do a decent job of folding myself into normal society, when I must. But it's an act, Katsa; it's always an act. . . . When I'm in my father's city there's a part of me that's simply waiting until I can travel again. Or return to my own castle, where I'm left alone.''
In the course of her dark and eventful tale, Cashore plays with the idea of awkwardness, how at a certain age gifts and talents are burdens, how they make it impossible to feel comfortable in the world. And in this she writes a fairly realistic portrait of teenage life into the baroque courts of her outlandish kingdoms.
There is also embedded in this adventure a tempestuous love story; it begins with the two Gracelings fighting, and the anger that flows between them is as interesting as the attraction. They train together, as both are gifted in physical combat. And somehow in all of this struggle and resistance Cashore offers an acute portrayal of sexual awakening: ambivalent, rageful, exhilarating, wistful in turns.
At one point Katsa thinks of herself as a ''vicious beast that struck out at friends in uncontrollable anger.'' In many respects ''Graceling'' is a study of mysterious angers: it offers a perfect parable of adolescence, as its characters struggle with turbulent emotions they must learn to control. The consequences are more tangible than they usually are in more mundane settings -- if Katsa loses control, she breaks someone's jaw by accident -- but the principle is the same. The teenage characters in this novel, like some we may know in life, grow into their graces. They realize that their monstrous individuality is not so monstrous after all.
By KATIE ROIPHE
Roiphe, Katie. "Lady Killer." The New York Times Book Review 9 Nov. 2008: 33(L). Literature Resource Center. Web.
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