"My name is Percy Jackson.
I'm twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.
Am I a troubled kid?
Yeah. You could say that."
- Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief
As an undiagnosed neurodivergent only child, I spent a lot of time reading. I was always told I was “mature” for my age, so I didn’t always get along with other kids. Then, I found Percy Jackson. I was initially given the book series by a teacher because of the Greek mythology aspect. I was always a good student with an insatiable hunger to learn, and the Percy Jackson canon presented me with a seemingly bottomless cavern of lore to memorize. The more I read, I discovered how lonely I was. I read about the bustling Camp Half-Blood and all of these children who came from lonely upbringings only to discover a cabin full of new siblings who shared their interests.
The Hephaestus kids would share engineering tricks. The Athena kids would be up all night formulating plans. Even the Hermes kids were perpetually engaged in a prank war with themselves and the rest of the camp. I would dream about all of the siblings that were out there. Just like me. Feeling out of place in their families and school. And maybe they were thinking about me! As I've gotten older and have received my (several) diagnoses, I've started seeing the ways that the series was disputing some of my core beliefs about my worth and what was expected of me. And I get all warm and fuzzy thinking about how this new series will do that for a new generation of kids.
Rick Riordan is adapting his best-selling series into a television program streaming on Disney +. Our heroes are three of the most ADORABLE kids I've ever seen, and I would kill for them. (I'm looking at you, Blonde Annabeth truthers. Talk sh*t. Get hit.) Of course, as a longtime lover of the series, I'm glad there will finally be a live-action adaptation that honors the energy and intention of the source material. However, when you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on numerous theater degrees, you can't help but ask, "Why now?" Whereas this question typically makes me realize that my new favorite thing is superfluous when considering PJO, my excitement only intensified.
My friend worked as a nanny during the pandemic and after. Her charge was a rambunctious child with immense intelligence and immense ADHD. He hated doing his homework, and he hated sitting down. He had every ability to succeed, but the structure of his classroom didn't provide him with the tools he needed to succeed. This is a tale as old as time. However, his hyperactivity was not only due to his biology. He started going to school on Zoom. This hyperactive kid was suddenly expected to sit 5 feet from his favorite toys at a desk for hours. Getting distracted was punished. It was a prison for him. I urged my friend to introduce the kid to the world of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. He was enthralled. Suddenly, the kid who threw a tantrum when he had to complete his reading assignment for 5 minutes was reading chapter upon chapter and complaining when my friend had to stop. He identified with the demigods, especially Percy Jackson because their hyperactivity and dyslexia kept getting them in trouble. They didn't fit in school. Or the real world. But in the Percy Jackson world, that isn't an inherent judgment on the worth of the characters. It's the opposite. These characteristics that made them problem children in the real world are what made them heroes. They're hyperactive because they're meant to be in combat. They have dyslexia because their brains are hardwired for Ancient Greece. It's not the child that's wrong. It's the environment. The system that refuses to accommodate. Your weaknesses are strengths when placed in a different environment. Riordan's world changed his life! Of course, focusing was still a struggle for him, but now he had a vocabulary to communicate his frustrations. Before, he felt like he was "bad" or "stupid," but the perspectives of Percy and the other demigods allowed him to see his abilities with more nuance. Certain subjects like English and Social Studies were his "half-blood weaknesses," and Math and Science were his "half-blood strengths."
This identification is the point of Percy Jackson as a character. Author Rick Riordan has been explicit about the intention of writing his characters with neurodivergence.
"When I was writing Percy Jackson, my son was being tested for learning differences. He was having trouble reading, and some trouble focusing in the classroom. The teachers were wondering about ADHD and dyslexia. He was frustrated about learning to read, and we had to explain to him that the testing was designed to help the teachers help him, not to make him feel bad.
While this was happening, I did a lot of reading about dyslexia and ADHD… I was surprised to learn that ADHD and dyslexia frequently go together. The books also confirmed something I already knew: that dyslexic/ADHD kids are creative, "outside-the-box" thinkers. They have to be, because they don't see or solve problems the same way other kids do. In school, unfortunately, they are sometimes written off as lazy, unmotivated, rude, or even stupid. They aren't. If they can get through their rough school years, they often go on to become very successful adults.
Making Percy ADHD/dyslexic was my way of honoring the potential of all the kids I've known who have those conditions. It's not a bad thing to be different. Sometimes, it's the mark of being very, very talented. That's what Percy discovers about himself in The Lightning Thief." – Rick Riordan.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians is an exceptional YA example. Unlike Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, all the heroes of PJO were socialized in our world. That makes Harry different in his story, but it unites the heroes in Percy's. Ricks' characters have experienced the same kinds of judgment as his readers. And not metaphorically. The teachers that Rick writes and the schools that he sets them in have direct parallels to how the education system often operates in America. This similarity invites his readers to identify with his characters. Then, he introduces the magic. Those teachers that make you feel awful? Well, they're actually monsters. It's not you. It's them. That school that makes you feel stupid? It's a front to hurt special children. It's not you. It's them. That teacher that makes you feel special? That friend that makes you feel safe? Trust them. They're creatures there to protect you.
We're still analyzing how the pandemic affected the education system. We don't know the extent of its effects on the learning development of the next generation. But we can't ignore that there was a significant impact. And because the children change much faster than the system does, we try to ignore the children's changes in favor of shoving them back into the system that never really worked in the first place. I can only imagine how it feels to be socialized during a global pandemic and then be expected to perform at the same level in the same ways as generations of children before me. I hope that the success of Percy Jackson and the Olympians gives those kids something to look at and see themselves as heroes. Heroes are born in a society that doesn't know what to do with them.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians is scheduled to premiere on December 20, 2023, with the first season consisting of eight episodes.