This morning I was reading The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan out loud to my 7 year old daughter.

Like her sister before her, she is obsessed with Riordan’s series. I, too, am a huge fan. The pacing is perfect. The characters are smart, funny, and brave. The writing is great. But I’ve got a an issue with the books. As I always blog on Reel Girl, if the pattern in The Lost Hero were in just one book, or even half the books, it would not be a problem for me, or for my kids, or for kids in general. My problem is the repetition of the same old, same old in narrative after narrative after narrative. Read this passage and see if you can tell me what my objection to Riordan is:

“There’s four of us,” Hedge whispered urgently. “And only one of him.”

“Did you miss the fact that he’s thirty feet tall?” Leo asked.

“Okay,” Hedge said. “So, you, me and Jason distract him. Piper sneaks around and frees her dad.”

They all looked at Jason.

“What?” Jason said. “I’m not the leader.”

“Yes,” Piper said. “You are.”

They’d never really talked about it but no one disagreed, not even Hedge. Coming this far had been a team effort, but when it came to a life-and-death decision, Leo knew Jason was the one to ask. Even if he had no memory, Jason had a kind of balance to him. You could just tell he’d been in battles before, and he knew how to keep his cool.  Leo wasn’t exactly the trusting type but he trusted Jason with his life.