The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan

A great book for kids to read when reading Harry Potter books intimidate them with their size.

The second in a series of Percy Jackson and the Olympians is a good book to get started in the series. It starts with Percy dreaming about a friend in trouble and need rescuing when he wakes to the last day of school The last day of a school year when he hasn't been kicked out of school the whole year. That being an accomplishment gets you wondering what could this nice kid could have been doing.

When he gets to school a dodge ball game with school bully and some students he has never seen before get dirty. He has a friend named Tyson that seems a little slow and is a target of many. He is homeless and is sponsored by the private school. Percy takes him under his wing and this makes Tyson follow him and his only friend. When the new kids attack Percy and Tyson with some new dodge ball moves, the gym catches on fire.

So his last day is not so good and it seems that he will probably on his last day be kicked out. He runs away to the only place can go, Camp Half-blood.

His dream keeps haunting him. He knows he needs to save him, but when he gets to camp things have changed so drastically that now seems barely possible with the camp and campers in trouble. There has been a change in leadership; a change in security and Tyson is more than he knew. All he knows is that he has to save Grover and the Camp.

An adventure that will be sure to keep you and the kids reading. Methodological creatures are used in building the characters. Now you are hooked to read the previous books and the next books in the series. The first book "The Lightning Thief" is next on our children's bookshelf to go along with this one. This may be at start of another series of books on my children bookshelf to go along with the Goosebumps books.

I like to read books my child reads, we can discuss the book together. Since I read faster than he does I can keep up with his reading and give him little snippets when he seems to get disinterested, it gives his initiative to read more.

When he has schoolwork that requires reading I make sure that he has really read what he was supposed to. I am building a reader; I have built readers from my other two children, life long readers.