First Poster Winner

Congratulations to Sarah Loch at Valley Park Alternative in Baton Rouge. She is our first winner in the UK Percy poster giveaway. Your signed poster is in the mail!

Demigod of the Week

Thanks to Chloe, who emailed me to share her video on The Maze of Bones, which recently won the Story Tubes Judges Choice Award. You can see the whole list of winners here. You've got a great sense of humor, Chloe. You're our demigod of the week!

New Character Cards Released

Disney-Hyperion's Percy website will be adding new character cards each week until the Last Olympian is released. Go to the site and click on 'Olympians, Gods and Monsters.' This week, you can see pictures of Persephone and Morpheus and read all about the new players. Very cool!

Percy Jackson, Korean Style

The Percy Jackson series has been given many amazing cover treatments, but I'm especially fond of the Korean editions. In South Korea, each book is divided into two volumes, so there are eight covers for the four books so far. Above, you can see how the world of Percy is brought to life Korean-style.

The Tweets Keep Coming

If you haven't checked out my Twitter posts yet, follow along! Once a week from now until May 5, I'll be posting a hint about The Last Olympian. No spoilers, just little tidbits of information, but you won't find these anywhere but Twitter.

Also be sure you check out Disney-Hyperion's Percy Jackson site for a countdown, artwork of the main characters, videos and much more!

UK Poster Giveaway

When I was in England a few weeks ago, I asked Puffin Books if they'd be willing to send me some extra posters. As you can see above, they've made a very cool design which they give out to libraries.

Obviously, you can't find these posters in the States . . . until now. If you are a librarian or classroom teacher in the US or Canada and you'd like to receive a free signed UK Percy Jackson poster, send an email to the rickriordan.com website address. I will be picking one school's request at random each week between now and the release of The Last Olympian to receive a poster. This offer is only available to librarians and teachers, and you need to provide me with a verifiable school mailing address. Individual fans, sorry but I don't have that many posters! You can certainly ask your librarian to request one for the school, however.

Requests for posters must be received by April 15. The posters are pre-folded, and will be mailed in a standard document-sized manila envelope. Good luck!

New Teacher Guide for Lightning Thief

I don't normally make adults 'demigod of the week,' but Kathleen Joaquin of San Antonio ISD certainly deserves that honor. Kathleen has developed her own classroom-tested curriculum for the Lightning Thief and generously offered to share it with others. If you've ever developed your own unit, you know how time-consuming this can be. Kathleen's includes vocabulary sheets, reading activities, critical thinking exercises, quizzes and more -- basically everything you would need to teach Lightning Thief, on top of the curriculum guide I provided on my website before!

Thanks, Kathleen, for sharing your hard work with others. You are demigod of the week!

Check out Kathleen's unit. For the website's complete list of teacher resources, check here.

Saint Louis Event

Check out all the cool stuff the Saint Louis Library is planning prior to my visit on May 15! They are using the Lightning Thief as part of the Read Saint Louis program, and will be hosting a number of Camp Half-Blood activities during May at several locations. I especially love the idea of a public forum on ADHD/dyslexia. Thanks to the library for hosting so many amazing opportunities for parents and kids to get involved. I looked forward to my visit on May 15. I also think it's fun that the adult author for Read Saint Louis is Sandra Cisneros, who also lives in San Antonio.

More Last Olympian News

Yesterday I visited the Disney Publishing offices in White Plains, NY, where I saw the first finished copy of The Last Olympian hot off the presses. (This was an early production copy. Of course, the book will still not be available for sale until May 5.) The book looks beautiful! It's definitely my favorite design so far, and it's got some cool artwork details that you'll have to wait and see.

I also got to see some great new Percy Jackson artwork commissioned for the May signing events. Check out the 'Olympians, Gods and Monsters' section of percyjacksonbooks.com to see the Titan Hyperion and the goddess Hestia. More new pictures will be posted every couple of weeks.

Also news from the UK: Puffin Books will be sponsoring a Last Olympian competition to win a 4-night trip to New York (a.k.a. Mount Olympus)! Details will be stickered on each British copy of Last Olympian and will be available on the British Percy website. The competition runs until Aug. 31, 2009, and is only open the British and Irish fans. Stay tuned for more details.

From Champaign to Rye

Above are some pictures from my visit last week to Champaign, Illinois. Thanks to Betsy at the public library for coordinating the visit and supplying the pictures. I visited three middle schools and did a public event at the public library. I understand the free tickets for the evening event were gone twenty minutes after they were made available. Yikes! Right after I left Illinois, I got an email from the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Award committee (the Illinois state reading award) that The Lightning Thief had won for 2009. What an honor, and what timing!

As you can see above, we had a great time in Champaign. One young gentleman made his own Camp Half-Blood t-shirt. Actually we had quite a few of these! I'm always telling people they can make their own, which are often better than mine, and this was proof. We also had a couple of fans show up in Party Pony t-shirts, which I had never seen before. Kudos for creativity!

This week I'm in Rye, NY, just north of NYC, for three days of middle school visits. I'll give you a report on that later in the week. I'll also be visiting the Disney publishing offices in White Plains, which is the first time I've been there since they moved from Manhattan. We will be holding a meet-and-greet 'pep rally' to celebrate the imminent release of The Last Olympian. Only six weeks away now!

The Last Olympian Tour

Dates are now official for the Last Olympian tour! You can see the details on my web calendar. Just click the link and go to the month of May.

I'm looking forward to the events -- sixteen cities in all! I get to revisit a lot of my favorite venues, but we've also managed to work in a lot of places I've never been to before. Canada for the first time -- Vancouver! (Sorry, you guys in Toronto, nothing on your side of the country this time). I also get to do my first event in South Florida and several in the Midwest so you guys in the middle of the country don't feel ignored! Dayton, St. Louis, St. Paul -- I'll be seeing you all soon.

The hardest part of a tour is always the places I don't get to go. There are so many great bookstores in so many great cities, and alas there's only one of me. Fortunately, I don't make the decisions about where I go. I leave that to the publisher, because it would be too hard for me to choose. Certainly they've made the tour as long as they could, and we've packed in as much as we could. My family is already gearing up for the marathon of me being away for three solid weeks.

If I am not coming to a city near you, my apologies! There was just no way we could fit in everything. However, any of the host bookstores will be happy to take pre-orders for signed books. Contact them ahead of time. When I do the event, they will have your books waiting for me to personalize. They will then ship them to you after the book signing, or hold them for pick up.

If you are close to an event, I hope to see you in May! We'll have a lot of fun.

Pictures from Oxford

Above are some pictures from last week's UK tour. It's hard to pick a favorite day, but the costume contest in Oxford was definitely a highlight!

Percy Artwork from John Rocco

This is pretty cool: John Rocco, the illustrator for the American Percy Jackson covers, has just made his artwork available on t-shirts and other cool stuff through zazzle.com. Check out his on-line store. I am not involved in this venture, by the way, but it looks fun. Personally, I'm thinking about getting a Last Olympian mouse pad! I get tons of email from kids asking for Camp Half-Blood t-shirts. Unfortunately, these are extremely limited promotional items and they are not available for sale. However, John's t-shirts are, so this is a great way to dress your young demigods!

A Week in England

I’m writing from the Waldorf, which has been my home away from home while in England. Tomorrow I head back to Texas (for one day) after a week of school visits.
The World Book Day events went very well. The Sword of Hades was published as part of a one-pound book that children could buy for tokens, the idea being to promote reading and get more books into the hands of young readers. I signed quite a few copies!

Tuesday I did an event in London, followed by one in Ipswich. The kids were all great, but special thanks to Kerry, a big fan in Ipswich, who greeted me as I got to the school and had great questions. She even won a t-shirt during the Greek myth quiz, which I was glad to see.

Wednesday I spent the day in Norwich. It’s an interesting city in Norfolk with a river, castle, and beautiful cathedral. Both school groups were great, and again I signed tons of Sword of Hades and the other Percy titles.

Yesterday we took the train to Oxford for two more visits, both of which were fantastic. Oxford is just a beautiful place. At each school, students dressed up as Greek myth characters and I had to choose the winner (tough job!) to get a fifty pound prize of Puffin books. The winning costumes were Chiron and Icarus, though there were several Medusas and Aphrodites who had amazing costumes as well.

Today we had an event at a girls’ school in Bournemouth, and I think it’s safe to say that Logan Lerman was a popular choice to play Percy Jackson in the movie. As the British might put it, the girls were quite chuffed when they heard the news and saw his picture.

Next week, I’m off to Champaign, Illinois. More on that later.

In the meantime, 39 Clues: The Sword Thief was published this week, and exciting news was announced for that series. If you haven't heard, Linda Sue Park and Margaret Peterson Haddix have joined the 39 Clues team of authors. Read the article for the full scoop!