Day 3- Favorite Book Series

This one was difficult.  Almost all the books that I read are a "series".  There were ultimately three book series that I wanted to decide between.  The first one is The Lord of the Rings, but since I've already blogged about it, I decided to go with another one. 
The other two are:  Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Super close behind these two is The Hunger Games trilogy.  I think I am going to go ahead and say that Percy Jackson and the Olympians is my favorite series.

Although each of these book series are very different, and I like them for a lot of reasons, Percy reaches me in a way that is a lot different than the other series.  Harry Potter is fantastic, with excellent character development, plot continuity and development, and a story that literally brings you to tears very often.  There are several nuggets of wisdom throughout the text (very similar to Lord of the Rings).  
Hunger Games is the "guilty pleasure" book trilogy---I absolutely love the characters, plot and not-so-subtle motifs and parallels that are found throughout the books.  I really enjoyed the "love triangle" (even though it's not much of a love triangle, just Katniss being completely oblivious).  And the ending, although depressing, is intense and thought-provoking.  Whereas Harry Potter is ultimately a triumph of good v. evil, Hunger Games is a look into man v. self as much as good v. evil.

So, why do I like Percy Jackson so much?  Part of it is the writing style.  Since I love middle school aged children, and I have a distinctly middle school sense of humor myself, I find the Percy Jackson series to be highly entertaining.  I also happen to love history and mythology, so the books are a lot of fun to read. The characters are flawed, very much so, but extremely likable.  And they know how to laugh at themselves... (except the Gods, really).  There's also a simplicity to the story:  not too many parallels or motifs.  Not a lot of symbolism, but just a lot of fun.  It's nice to read a well-written book series that doesn't have the author's agenda entrenched in it.

But one of the reasons that I love this series so much is because I am a former reading teacher.  As a former reading teacher, I found these books, read them, and highly recommended them to my students.  I have especially found that these books are wonderful for kids who HATE to read.  If there was any student of mine that didn't like reading, I told them to check out  The Lightning Thief and then come back and talk to me about it.  So many students picked up that book, then the rest of the series, and then started asking me for more recommendations.  I have never been more happy with a book series in my professional career, because this author gets that age group.  Again, I love the sense of humor, the action, the characters, the overall plot, and the adventure.  The follow up series:  The Heroes Olympus I might like even better than the first series, but since it's not finished, I can't judge yet.