My 7-year-old is a major fan of Rick Riordan’s novels, and this weekend for a birthday present, I took her on a tour of sites from the books located in Manhattan. When I mentioned my planning for the trip on Facebook I got a lot of interest from other parents, so I figured I’d write up what we did and how it worked.
Obviously your mileage will vary with age of kid, willingness to walk, attention span, and level of obsession. My daughter knows the books well enough that we could drop into the stories at any point and read the chapter that bears upon the site we were visiting and have it make sense. Also she can be read aloud to approximately forever and not get tired of it. And we did–there’s something pretty neat about sitting in the spot being described and reading the story. You pick up on details you wouldn’t notice if you just walked up to something and said “Look, there’s the Plaza Hotel where the demigod army made their headquarters in the Battle of Manhattan” and stood there for five minutes. Given that the passages we wanted spanned several physical books and we were traveling light, I brought with me our paper copy of The Last Olympian (TLO), and then sprang for ebook versions of The Lightning Thief (TLF), The Red Pyramid (RP), and “The Crown of Ptolemy” to read from my phone. (Plus a backup battery stick for the phone.) That worked out quite well. Continue reading
Mjoy 