"You Gotta Love Aphrodite!" Percy Jackson's Greek Gods by Rick Riordan

"I hope I'm getting extra credit for this. A publisher in New York asked me to write down what I know about the Greek gods, and I was like, Can we do this anonymously? Because I don't need the Olympians mad at me again.

If you don't know me, my name is Percy Jackson. I'm a modern demi-god."

And who better to give us up-close-and-personal thumbnail bios of those classical mythology characters than Rick Riordan's demi-god hero, Percy Jackson? Having spent more literary time than he really wanted dodging lightning bolts and other insults to his person with those guys, he's surely got the inside track to their personalities. The hero of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series proceeds to tell all about those pesky Greek gods and goddesses who haunt middle-school mythology units, usually safely contained in (mostly undisturbed) dusty library tomes, with the sarcastic point of view that only a young teen demi-god can give us.

Percy's chapter headings give us an idea of what's in store within: "The Beginning and Stuff; The Golden Age of Cannibalism; Zeus? Forget Him; Hermes Goes to Juvie; Demeter Turns into Grainzilla; Persephone Marries Her Stalker; Ares, The Manly Man's Manly Man; Hestia Chooses Bachelor #0; and "Hades Does Home Improvements," to name some of the deities ruling over their own sections.

Percy/Rick provides a disclaimer that "there are bazillions of different versions of the myths, so don't get all 'Well, I heard it a different way.'" But with some allowance for Percy's tongue-in-cheek delivery, Rick Riordan's just published Percy Jackson's Greek Gods (Hyperion Books, 2014) provides a highly readable resource for middle readers' school assignments or for Percy's many fans, who have been with him since The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1) first came off the presses or who have just discovered this best-selling series, to visit with their favorite hemi-semi-demi-god once again.

Percy Jackson offers an afterword and a thorough index, but appends his own ironical message for his dear readers:

"Please. There are about 100,000 Greek Gods out there. I am a little too ADHD to include everyone of them.

Please don't give the publisher any ideas. This writing gig is hard!