News

Lightning Thief wins Red House Award!

This weekend happens to be my birthday, and what a fabulous present I just got. The Lightning Thief has won the Red House Children’s Book Award in the United Kingdom! See the article below from the Guardian. Many thanks to all my British readers. I am honored and thrilled that they liked the book so much.

Friday June 2 2006
Puffin clean sweep at Red House awards
By Michelle Pauli 08:12pm

Party poppers flew, kazoos blew and the winner of the 26th Red House Children’s Book award has just been announced at the Hay festival, at a party attended by 60 of the children who voted.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan won the overall prize. It’s a leftfield, comic novel about a 12-year-old boy with attention deficit disorder who discovers that the Greek gods of Olympus are alive and living in New York.

Riordan’s win made it a clean sweep for Puffin authors who also won the books for younger children category (with Pigs Might Fly! by Jonathan Emmett and Steve Cox) and the books for younger readers category (Spy Dog by Andrew Cope).

The Red House awards is the only children’s book prize to be voted on entirely by children. It is run by the Federation of Children’s Book Groups and children from book groups from all over the country came to Hay for a party and the ceremony.

Rick Riordan