Rick Riordan
Rick Riordan
Richard Russell "Rick" Riordan, Jr. is an American author known for writing the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, which is about a twelve-year-old who discovers he is a son of Poseidon. His books have been translated into 37 languages and sold more than 30 million copies in the US. Twentieth Century Fox has adapted the first two books of his Percy Jackson series as part of a series of films. His books have spawned related media, such as graphic novels...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionYoung Adult Author
Date of Birth5 June 1964
CountryUnited States of America
I loved the idea of making history interesting for kids! When Scholastic approached me about 'The 39 Clues', I immediately started going through the 'greatest hits' from my years as a social studies teacher, and picked the historical characters and eras that most appealed to my students.
You know what would help this boy?" Demeter mused. "Farming." Persephone rolled her eyes. "Mother-" "Six months behind a plow. Excellent character building.
I love Norse mythology - Thor and Odin and Loki - amazing characters.
All of my characters tend to be montages of different people I've met: little bits and pieces of their personalities put together.
I think kids want the same thing from a book that adults want - a fast-paced story, characters worth caring about, humor, surprises, and mystery. A good book always keeps you asking questions, and makes you keep turning pages so you can find out the answers.
It's always hard to wrap up a series. The longer I spend with the characters, the more they become like friends.
Kids, if anything, are harder to write for because they are a more discerning audience. They will not stay with you if you go off on a tangent or if you give them extraneous information that doesn't serve the story. You really have to tell a tight story. You have to give them humor and suspense and believable characters. All those things that adults want too, but you have to be really on your game when you're writing for kids.
It's wonderful being an author and having so many kids enjoying my books. That's always been my dream job, and I feel very lucky to be able to do it.
The Met is such a powerful place for me because it's a natural connection between the ancient world and the modern world. And when you're dealing with ancient mythology, trying to put a modern spin on it, you really can't do much better than to call on the Met.
Even if these stories are 3,000 years old, there's still so much about the characters, about the dilemmas, about their understanding of the universe that still resonates. The whole idea of order and chaos, which is really central to the ancient Egyptian understanding of the world, is still very much with us.
Every child is different. I think it's important that we don't have maybe just one or two books that we're recommending to all children - but rather we cater the books to fit each individual child.
The Web or card experience is not at all going to replicate the book experience, nor is the book experience going to replicate the Web.
The older I get, the less I obsess about material stuff. In fact, stuff has become the enemy. There always seems to be more of it than I have storage in my house!
As a teacher, I've never seen anything like 'Harry Potter.' That's why I smart when people talk about the 'next' 'Harry Potter.' There is no 'next' 'Harry Potter.'