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Title | Percy Jackson's Greek Gods
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Author | Rick Riordan
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Cover Art | John Rocco
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Publisher | Disney - Hyperion - 2014
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First Printing | Disney - Hyperion - 2014
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Title | Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes
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Author | Rick Riordan
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Cover Art | John Rocco
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Publisher | Disney - Hyperion - 2015
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First Printing | Disney - Hyperion - 2015
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Category | Children/Young Adult
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Warnings | None
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Main Characters | Percy Jackson and the Greek Gods, Heroes & Monsters
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Main Elements | Gods, heroes, monsters, mythology
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Website | Rick Riordan Official Site
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 Percy Jackson's Greek Gods
Who could tell the origin stories of the gods of Olympus better than a modern-day demigod? PERCY JACKSON provides an insider's view with plenty of 'tude in this illustrated collection.
A publisher in New York asked me to write down what I know about the Greek gods, and I was like, "Can we do this anonymously? Because I don't need the Olympians mad at me again." But if it helps you to know your Greek gods, and survive an encounter with them if they ever show up in your face, then I guess writing all this down will be my good deed for the week.
So begins Percy Jackson's Greek Gods, in which the son of Poseidon adds his own magic—and sarcastic asides—to the classics. He explains how the world was created, then gives readers his personal take on a who's who of ancients, from Apollo to Zeus. Percy does not hold back. "If you like lots of lying, stealing, backstabbing, and cannibalism, then read on, because it definitely was a Golden Age for all that."
Dramatic full-color illustrations throughout by Caldecott Honoree John Rocco make this volume—a must for home, library, and classroom shelves—as stunning as it is entertaining.
Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes
Who cut off Medusa's head? Who was raised by a she-bear? Who tamed Pegasus?
It takes a demigod to know, and Percy Jackson can fill you in on the all the daring deeds of Perseus, Atalanta, Bellerophon, and the rest of the major Greek heroes. Told in the funny, irreverent style readers have come to expect from Percy, ( I've had some bad experiences in my time, but the heroes I'm going to tell you about were the original old school hard luck cases. They boldly screwed up where no one had screwed up before. . .) and enhanced with vibrant artwork by Caldecott Honoree John Rocco, this story collection will become the new must-have classic for Rick Riordan's legions of devoted fans--and for anyone who needs a hero.
So get your flaming spear. Put on your lion skin cape. Polish your shield and make sure you've got arrows in your quiver. We're going back about four thousand years to decapitate monsters, save some kingdoms, shoot a few gods in the butt, raid the Underworld, and steal loot from evil people. Then, for dessert, we'll die painful tragic deaths. Ready? Sweet. Let's do this.
I've been reading a lot of mythology this year. I read Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey, Virgil's The Aeneiad, and of course other sources of Greek and Roman myth. But I'm a fan of the Percy Jackson books and I knew that these would be a very different and humourous take on the myths, while still holding to the core truths of the myths (or as much as that is possible as every myth has several variations).
In these two volumes you meet all of the main Greek Gods and many of the Greek Heroes. I started laughing right on the first page, and you know what, Percy's commentary is generally dead on. I mean yes, ick, all the gods were running around having kids with their siblings and offspring...though to be fair there weren't too many to pick from at the start, after all at the beginning of time the were just one, Chaos, so pretty much everyone is related. At least humans have had different sources, from clay men made by Prometheus, to stones thrown over the shoulders of the only two remaining humans after a great flood (yeah, a lot of Christian myth tends to mirror ancient Greek myth, from Noah to Eve), and even ants.
Now these aren't little kiddie tales, while Riordan is aiming at a younger audience the Greek Myths are still full of rape, incest, murder, dismemberment, blood, gore, monsters, torture and other really nasty stuff. And it's usually the humans who suffer when the gods get grumpy. But again Jackson's commentary helps to lighten the mood, and those pronounciation guides helped a lot while still managing to be amusing. And one could argue, sure the ancients wouldn't talk like a modern day teenager, but teens have always had their own dialect, so I figured that those young princesses and heroes probably would have spoken something along those lines.
And I guess the most important part, while of course there are some ridiculous filler, the stories themselves are about as accurate one can be when it comes to an ancient verbal tradition that evolved over millenia. These books are a perfectly valid way to be introduced to Greek Mythology. I mean I still enjoyed The Iliad and The Odyssey, in fact I was surprised at how not boring they were, but they are still a bit of a slog, and in truth you don't learn much about the vast majority of the myths (maybe I need to read Ovid). And why not have fun while doing it?
And Rocco's artwork is gorgeous. Only one downside, these books are huge and they are HEAVY, I had to lay it flat in front of me and sit cross-legged to read it, definitely not holding it in your hands! I wanted to encourage a couple of my family members to give it a try but my Mom's arthritis makes that impossible. But otherwise, I adored the large format and the glossy colour pages.
You don't need to have read the rest of Percy Jackson's adventures but he does reference them, particularly as he describes a monster he'd gone up against in the main series, and if you really want to avoid all possible spoilers you need to read these companion books after The Heroes of Olympus.
Some people might stick up their noses, say it's too silly or inacurrate but then I'd say those people who will only take their mythology from a textbook don't know how to have fun. Nor do they get that most of these tales are exactly that, something that the equivalent of a bard would go around and tell in the evenings. It was religion but also a kind of soap opera entertainment (Who does Zeus have an affair with next? Tune in next week...) so I don't see why we shouldn't have fun with it now, and come on, some of the stories? They are hillarious to begin with (baby Hermes stealing brother Apollo's cows...)
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