Book: Percy Jackson And The Lightning Thief

So years ago I saw the movie based on this best selling YA book series. It was only okay, not a great film. There were several distracting elements, namely that the author seems to be largely ignorant of Greek Mythology. For instance, a key character in the story is daughter of Athena. Pallas Athena is a virgin goddess and patron of Athens. Virgin. Can't have sex. Like Artemis. I get the feeling that the frequent mentions of ADD and ADHD is specific to gain those sufferers as its primary audience. Other aspects of the setting are fine, such as Olympus moving to the top of the Empire State building is a touch clicheed. Perseus was the son of Zeus, not Poseidon, btw. The author got that wrong too.

The book is a lot better than the movie, which was rushed into 90 minutes and left a lot of the plot unexplained. For new authors, a journey is a good way to show off a setting. The book has a lot more of this than the movie did, which largely skipped it.

Would a teenager like this book? A teenage boy? He talks about impulsiveness, and temper problems, which I know are major problems with ADHD kids. The last one I knew was getting kicked out of his school for fighting. True, that school was about half meth junkies, and that's a middle school here. Drug problems in Rural California are ridiculously common. Apparently welfare moms aren't good at saying no to drugs and raise children who say yes.

The primary gimmick is that kids who can't sit still are really "special" not from ADD and ADHD problems, but because their REAL missing parent is a god so they have strong magical powers. In Japan this kind of thing is called Chunibyo (Chu nee beyo). Its considered a serious problem of delusion there. To be fair, most entertainment is for distraction from reality, and this will do that. The writing style is like a light novel, so it's light on scene detail. This is probably appropriate for pacing a story when your reader has ADD. Would I recommend it? Hmm. I'm not sure. Finding good books for male teenagers, since the market is fully saturated with ones for teenage girls, is difficult.

Manga like Bleach, Deathnote, One Piece, and Naruto are all about the violence and temper tantrums. These are not stories to keep teens out of jail. They are popular, and have quality anime made about them, but they're still about temper tantrums and violence. Not about controlling your temper, but having more tantrums. MRIs have shown that violence goes to the pleasure center in the brain so committing violence is physically addictive, which is true for both genders, but managing ones temper should be a core skill rather than something abused and landing the sufferer in jail.