Description:
A misty forest with two figures in the foreground, one with a backpack and the other with a sword.

Chapter 1: I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood. If you’re reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life. Being a half-blood is dangerous. It’s scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways. If you’re a normal kid, reading this because you think it’s fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened. But if you recognize yourself in these pages – if you feel something stirring inside – stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it’s only a matter of time before they

Description:
An eerie museum hallway with ancient Greek and Roman artifacts. In the foreground, a troubled twelve-year-old boy named Percy stands with his Latin teacher.

sense it too, and they’ll come for you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. My name is Percy Jackson. I’m twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York. Am I a troubled kid? Yeah. You could say that. I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan – twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff. I know – it sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were. But Mr Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had

Description:
'A cluttered classroom filled with Roman artifacts and a motorized wheelchair. In the foreground, a scruffy, thin-haired teacher welcomes students.'

hopes. Mr Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn’t think he’d be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armour and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn’t put me to sleep. I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn’t get in trouble. Boy, was I wrong. See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn’t aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway. And

Description:
A crowded bus hurtles towards New York City. In the foreground, a scrawny boy with acne and a wispy beard cries as a red-headed girl pummels him with a sandwich.

before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that . . . Well, you get the idea. This trip, I was determined to be good. All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly red-headed kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend, Grover, in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich. Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must’ve been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was cripp