If you haven’t heard of the popular author Rick Riordan, now may be the time to start listening. In September 2016 Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, announced through Publisher’s Weekly that he would be creating an imprint with Disney in response to commonly asked questions like “Will you be writing about Hindu mythology? Chinese? Native American?” Rather than push himself to write those stories himself, Riordan worked with Disney to find and publish books by middle grade authors from those backgrounds themselves!
On his website, Riordan states, “I saw that there was a lot of interest in reading fantasy adventures based on different world mythologies, but I also knew I wasn’t the best person to write them. Much better, I thought, to use my experience and my platform at Disney to put the spotlight on other great writers who are actually from those cultures and know the mythologies better than I do. Let them tell their own stories, and I would do whatever I could to help those books find a wide audience.”
What is also great about this is is that even though Riordan won’t be writing these stories himself, he is curating a list of books he would “enthusiastically” recommend to his readers. The first book on the list? A story about a young girl who lies to impress her peers and ends up lighting a cursed lamp thus awakening a demon. Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi was be published on March 27 and is available to request at the library.
You can read more about Rick Riordan Presents and the list of authors and stories they will be publishing on the official website.
