I came upon a homework assignment on the kitchen table entitled “My Hero”. While I wasn’t expecting to be the subject of such a report, I was surprised by the opening sentence:

For a hero most people have their mom or dad or even their pets, but I'm different.

Now Abby’s not the sort to pick some singing pop star as her hero, but explicitly calling out her parents (and pets?) as people that are not her hero was a bit unexpected. Like I said, I’m not looking for adulation, maybe just a little recognition. Or something.

It turns out that Abby’s hero is Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson series of novels. She credits him with showing her that reading can be fun. This is amusing to me because it was upon my insistence that Abby stop reading only the required 10-minute increments and start reading whole chapters each evening as her homework. What was once a stuttering incoherent smattering of paragraphs completed in an allotted time period suddenly became a story worth sticking with, and soon she was reading multiple chapters willingly, without incentive.

Maybe his book had something to do with that. But when we were reading the Percy Jackson series, we read it together. It was a kind of informal race. I think it was fun to be able to discuss the book with her afterwards, since we both had read it. We could share that experience. Maybe I’m mistaken in that it brought us closer together by giving us something more in common. Huh… strange…

So yes. Rick Riordan is my hero, too. Because without his compelling books, Abby and I would not have shared that experience, and she would not be the excellent reader and creative writer she is today.