My dear, I'm a cat. Everything I see is mine.

Back when I taught middle school and wrote adult mysteries, my students often asked me why I wasn't writing for kids. I never had a good answer for them. It took me a long time to realize they were right.

I think anytime you're writing to the middle grades, you're writing to young readers who are trapped in a number of ways between two worlds: between childhood and adulthood, between their friends and their parents.

Looking up in the sky, I saw the stars were brighter now. They made a pattern I had never noticed before- a gleaming constellation that looked a lot like a girls figure- a girl with a bow, running across the sky. "Let the world honor you, my Huntress. Live forever in the stars.

Either the kid was naturally hyper or he was hopped up on enough caffeine to give a heart attack to a water buffalo.

Chiron probably wanted me to say, Heck it wa nothing. I eat hellhounds for breakfast. But I didn't feel like lying.

Hermes's shoulders sagged. "They'll try, Percy. Oh, we'll all try to keep our promise. And maybe for a while things will get better. But we gods have never been good at keeping oaths. You were born because of a broken promise, eh? Eventually we'll become forgetful. We always do." "You can change." Hermes laughed. "After three thousand years, you think the gods can change their nature?" "Yeah," I said. "I do.