Archive for August, 2010

Adventures and fantasy: The Lightning Thief book and movie

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

Today I want to write about The Lightning Thief.  I recently read the book and saw the movie.

The Lightning Thief - book

The Lightning Thief - book

The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan – Last month my father’s friend Margaret gave me a book called The Lightning Thief. I had a feeling that it would be very adventurous. The story is something like fantasy.

After I got the book, I was excited to read a new book with no pictures. The book is about Percy Jackson, Annabeth and Grover going around the USA to retrieve the Master Bolt of Zeus, the king of the Olympians, who are the ancient Greek gods. The Olympians are Zeus, Hera, Posseidon, Hades, Ares, Apollo, Hermes, Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena, Hephaestus, Demeter and Dionysus. When I read this book I learned a lot about the gods of Greek mythology, and also about Greek mythological creatures such as the Medusa, centaurs, satyrs, Procrustes, the Minotaur, the Furies (they are also called “the Kindly Ones”), Echidna and Chimera, and Chiron and Charon.

The book is too adventurous. They fought a lot of creatures and went to interesting places such as The Lotus Casino in Las Vegas, and also to the Gateway Arch in St Louis. They also went to Los Angeles, and to Denver. In the Greek mythology world, they also went to Hades and Mount Olympus.

I enjoyed this book a lot because it has some funny parts also, and when Percy Jackson fought various creatures it was very exciting. Percy Jackson is a brave and strong boy. He has a secret, that is his father is actually one of the Greek Olympian gods. At first we don’t know about this, then we also don’t know which of the god is his father – is it Zeus, Hades, Posseidon (the Big Three), Dionysus, Apollo, Hermes, Ares or Hephaestus.

Some of the chapters have very funny titles, such as “We Get Advice From a Poodle”, “I Become Supreme Lord of the Bathroom”, “I Battle my Jerk Relative”, and “A God Buys us Cheeseburgers.”

I read this book twice, the first time I didn’t really understand, but when I read it the second time I understood it much better.

The Lightning Thief movie

The Lightning Thief - movie

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief – Last night I watched the movie called The LIghtning Thief with my mama and my papa.  It is quite different from the book that I read a few weeks ago.

The difference in this movie is that there was no Tartarus, no Ares, no Clarice (daughter of Ares), we didn’t see the two other Furies, Nancy Bobofit in Yancy Academy, there was not zebra or lion or antelope (from the chapter “We Take a Zebra to Vegas”), there was no Procrustes (from the chapter “We Shop for Water Beds”), no Echidna or Chimera (from the chapter “I Plunge to My Death”), no Fates (from the chapter “Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death”), no Chronos or Dionysus or the Helm of Darkness, which is Hades’ symbol of power. There was also no poodle (from the chapter “We Get Advice from a Poodle”), and they travelled by car and not by train. Percy also didn’t speak to the Oracle.

There were some new characters in the movie that weren’t in the book, they were the Hydra and Persephone.

I think that this movie is very different from the book, but I feel like it’s better than the book because there was one funny part when Grover showed the Hydra Medusa’s head, and when Hydra looked directly into Medusa’s eyes, Hydra was turned into a statue, and I said to my father and mother “I won’t be surprised when the visitors come the next morning and see Hydra, I hope they say ‘where did this dragon statue come from’?” In the movie I liked the part when they were in The Lotus Casino, Grover met some beautiful ladies and they were polishing Grover’s hooves.

I am looking forward to reading the book and seeing the next Percy Jackson story, that is called The Sea of Monsters.