The Last Hurrah for Percy Jackson
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By Matia Burnett -- Publishers Weekly, 4/30/2009
Fans have only five days left to wait for the May 5 release of The Last Olympian, the fifth and final book in Rick Riordan’s mythological fantasy series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, about a boy with dyslexia and ADHD who discovers he is the son of Poseidon. The series has been in the news of late: the fourth book, The Battle of the Labyrinth, was released on April 7 with a print run of 500,000, and a feature film of the first book, The Lightning Thief, is in the works for February 2010. Given the popularity of the first four books (U.S. sales for the series have topped four million copies), the excitement for the final installment should come as no surprise. Here’s a roundup of the plans for The Last Olympian.
• Riordan will begin a multi-city tour beginning on May 5, visiting bookstores in the following cities: Austin, Houston, Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, New York City, Boston, St. Paul, St. Louis, Raleigh, Miami, Atlanta, Dayton and San Antonio. For the book launch, he’ll be at BookPeople in Austin.
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• Disney’s “Percy Jackson and the Olympians Mythology Bee”—an opportunity for students to test their knowledge of mythology—has proven a success: there have been 1,000 requests for “bee kits” from schools and libraries across the country since last fall, and the “bees” have gotten underway this spring. Each individual “bee” winner is eligible to win the grand prize: a trip for four to Greece this summer to meet Riordan. The first-place winner will receive a trip for four to BookPeople’s “Camp Half Blood,” and second place wins signed copies of the series.
• BookPeople will hold its annual “Camp Half Blood,” a five-day long Percy Jackson-themed summer camp, “for demigods ages 9–13.” Sessions for this summer are already full (last year, more than 2,000 people attended Camp Half Blood).
• Finally, for those who can’t quite wait for the book’s May 5 release, Riordan has been leaking a few hints about The Last Olympian on Twitter.
