Life after Harry

I like the rest of the world have been counting down the days until Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows is released on July 21 (see earlier post). I have been reading the series to the boys out loud each night and they are hooked too.

Now the looming questions remains, what will we read once we close the cover on Harry, Ron and Hermione? Well, I might have the answer.

One of Rich's attendings told him about a series of books she has been reading to her two boys (age 7 and 9). It is called Percy Jackson and the Olympians. The three books are titled The Lighting Thief (Book 1), The Sea of Monsters (Book 2) and The Titan's Curse (Book 3). These books are about a boy who finds out he is the son of Poseidon and a mortal woman and follow Greek Mythology with a Harry Potter type twist. I thought they sounded good and ordered a copy of each from Amazon.com last week. Each book had five out of five star reviews and have won numerous book awards.

I'll let you know how they are, but they will have to wait until I find out if He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named gets his comeuppance in the end!

Here's the Booklist review from Amazon.com.

From BooklistGr. 6-9. The escapades of the Greek gods and heroes get a fresh spin in the first book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, about a contemporary 12-year-old New Yorker who learns he's a demigod. Perseus, aka Percy Jackson, thinks he has big problems. His father left before he was born, he's been kicked out of six schools in six years, he's dyslexic, and he has ADHD. What a surprise when he finds out that that's only the tip of the iceberg: he vaporizes his pre-algebra teacher, learns his best friend is a satyr, and is almost killed by a minotaur before his mother manages to get him to the safety of Camp Half-Blood--where he discovers that Poseidon is his father. But that's a problem, too. Poseidon has been accused of stealing Zeus' lightning bolt, and unless Percy can return the bolt, humankind is doomed. Riordan's fast-paced adventure is fresh, dangerous, and funny. Percy is an appealing, but reluctant hero, the modernized gods are hilarious, and the parallels to Harry Potter are frequent and obvious. Because Riordan is faithful to the original myths, librarians should be prepared for a rush of readers wanting the classic stories.