Saturday Adventure

Rick Riordan, a San Antonio author, writes great adult mystries, but he has made it big with his young adult series. The Lightening Thief has even been made into a movie. (He said he hasn't even seen the movie because he wants to keep his on images in his head for future books). This first series is based on Greek Mythology. Riordan uses Egyptian Mythology as his new vehicle in The Red Pyramid.

I have this "book thing" going on with my oldest grandson. I taught him to read a whole book while his folks were away for a week. He was so proud to demonstrate his accomplishments when they returned. As I remember, he was barely 5. Actually, he had been read to for so long and was ready to strike out on his own; he just didn't know it. I got him The Lighting Thief for Christmas when it came out. He loved it and has read all of Riordan's young adult books several times over. I always send him newspaper clippings about anything to do with Riordan.

Naturally, I couldn't miss the author's book signing for The Red Pyramid. The store was scheduled to start giving out tickets for the 2:00 p.m. signing at 9:00 a.m. that morning. We got there 20 minutes early, and there were already 300 people in line.
Tickets were an alphabet letter in numbers of 30...30 A's, 30 B's, 30 C's,...We got a J. We walked through the store a couple of hours later, tickets were at J1. By 12:30 we saw tickets with W3. Figure it out...26 letters to the alphabet times 30 times 4 turnovers! Comers had to be in the neighborhood of 3,000.

What's so great about this? We are talking about a book signing, not a rock concert. Kids and parents all over the place. Can you guess that I am a former reading teacher? I am a happy one to see this.