The Last Olympian Party

Man, what a party!! This was to honor the publication of The Last Olympian, but I finally decided to open it up to all Percy Jackson fans or anyone who had an interest in Greek Mythology. Or, as it turned out, to anyone who happened to be in the library. And that was a good thing. Some kids came in who were obviously too young to read PJ (or any fiction!) while others had never read the PJ books. Other were true-blue fans and knew all the books while one fan had not gotten to The Last Olympian yet. It was all good because everyone, PJ fan or not, had a really good time.

We started off with some snacks and discussion. I explained who PJ was and the premise of the books. The I asked them to identify the Greek gods. Then I asked for favorite books in the series; one liked The Last Olympian best while another liked the The Battle of the Labyrinth. Some said that Grover was the funniest character while some said it was Percy! And everyone, boys and girls alike said there was enough fighting and action to make it through the kissing scenes!

Then we had games. The nice people at Hyperion/Disney made it easy by putting a Last Olympian party kit online. That gave us the Medusa Freeze Tag game in which one player was Medusa and "froze" the others (the "demigods") by touching them. The other demigods unfroze each other by crawling through their legs. Wow, was it fun! Here's an idea:

Then we had had the Mount Olympus Slam Dunk game. (That was my idea!) I had the names of several different Olympians in a basket and pulled them out at random. When I pulled a name and called it out, the contestant had to do a slam dunk based on that name. For instance, if I said, "Ares!" that kid had to be very aggressive. Or, if I said, "Apollo!" you had to sing! The names were Hermes, Zeus, Ares, Poseidon, Aphrodite, and Dionysus! Here's a clip:

We played some more Medusa Freeze Tag, then everyone left with word searches and draw-your-own Typhon sheets from the Last Olympian party kit. Thanks, Hyperion/Disney! And thanks for coming out, everyone! It was fun!!!

Carl