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The Lightning Thief and sacrilege
Jan. 2nd, 2008 06:58 pmThis afternoon I finished reading The Lightning Thief, a young adult novel with the premise that the Greek gods are continuing to interbreed with humans and their offspring can get into all sorts of trouble if they aren’t taught at a special summer camp. It was fun to read, a bit intense, and humorous at times, but I have two objections.
The first is that the hero/narrator has the voice and attitude of a jaded 17-year-old, although he is actually only 11 or 12. The second is that although it's obviously an homage to Greek mythology, I’m somewhat bugged to consider that for some kids, this book will be their first introduction to these classics of our culture. That is, it’s fine for me to come across a character in a novel and recognize that it's really Procrustes. It would be quite another matter for a kid or young adult to read an anthology of Greek mythology and suddenly realize he'd previously met one of the characters as “Crusty, the sleazy L.A. mattress salesman.”
That said, last night we watched Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, and it doesn’t bother me at all that D’s first acquaintance with the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial comes from seeing them crushed and toppled by impact with falling Harryhausen spaceships.
The first is that the hero/narrator has the voice and attitude of a jaded 17-year-old, although he is actually only 11 or 12. The second is that although it's obviously an homage to Greek mythology, I’m somewhat bugged to consider that for some kids, this book will be their first introduction to these classics of our culture. That is, it’s fine for me to come across a character in a novel and recognize that it's really Procrustes. It would be quite another matter for a kid or young adult to read an anthology of Greek mythology and suddenly realize he'd previously met one of the characters as “Crusty, the sleazy L.A. mattress salesman.”
That said, last night we watched Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, and it doesn’t bother me at all that D’s first acquaintance with the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial comes from seeing them crushed and toppled by impact with falling Harryhausen spaceships.