Living the myth

From Rick Riordan's young person novel, Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief, which I heard today on a book-on-tape while observing a Los Angeles Unified 6th grade class, I learned that if one of your parents is a Greek god, you might have ADHD (because gods have so much to think about) and dyslexia (because the gods think in ancient Greek). This is the case with 12 year old Percy, whose mom, Sally, a mortal though she can "see through the mist," perceived Poseidon on the beach and one thing led to another.

The book's storyline has a remarkable resemblance to humankind's current, real storyline. In the chapter I heard, Percy, on an urgent diplomatic mission to avert a war of the gods, makes his way into the underworld to talk to Hades, the god of death. Due to his ADHD, Percy has multiple ideas about how to approach Hades, but Hades screams at Percy, accusing him of trying to start a war between the gods by hiding the Master Bolt, the gods' strongest weapon (producing lightening strikes as powerful as nuclear bombs), in his bag. Percy denies it but when pressed to open the bag, to his shock, there is the Master Bolt. Hades takes it but continues to be outraged because he still won't have enough power to wage war unless he has another weapon of the gods, the Helmet of Darkness, which makes the person wearing it invisible and creates fear in anyone nearby. Percy realizes that Aries, the god of war, must have slipped the Master Bolt into the bag as part of his plot to start a war of the gods. The teacher asked students why Aries wants to do that, and most answered, "Because he's the god of war." Apparently that's all it takes.