In Rick Riordan’s World, ADHD Is a Mark of the Gods
An interview with the novelist on fiction’s power to fight stigma
Approximately 25 million copies of the Percy books have been published, “give or take a million” per Disney Publishing Worldwide publicity director Seale Ballenger.
Emailing through Ballenger, I interviewed Riordan about why he chose Attention Deficit and how his novels help kids with the disorder fight stigma:
Why give Percy ADHD?
Riordan: My oldest son Haley was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia when he was in second grade. He was struggling in school. About the only thing he enjoyed that year was their unit on Greek mythology. Since I was a middle school teacher at the time and had taught Greek mythology for years, I started telling him bedtime stories from the Greek myths as a way to keep him interested. When I ran out of myths to tell him, I made up the story of Percy Jackson. Percy has ADHD and dyslexia because my son does. Percy’s story was a way of telling Haley, “Learning differences don’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. In fact, it is a mark of being very special indeed. You might even be a demigod!” Haley had no problem believing that. It empowered him to see himself represented in the story, and he was the reason I wrote the novel in the first place.
