Reading any of Rick Riordan’s books is always exciting. The main characters are funny, the writing is intriguing, and while the first two books in the “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” series were a bit juvenile (in all fairness, Percy was 11-12 in those books, and I was 19, so I can’t really complain) I’ve always felt the characters handled things in a mostly mature manner.

However, the one thing I noticed the “Percy Jackson” series lacked was diversity. Percy and the rest of the demigods were children with ADHD/ADD, which was interesting as I had never read a book with a character suffering from that before, but they were all white. Percy was white, Annabeth was white, the entire Athena cabin was blonde haired and gray eyed. Yes, there was Nico, who was Hispanic, but Nico wasn’t a main character.

This all changed in “The Heroes of Olympus”, which is a continuation of the “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” series. Out of ten main characters, three were white. You've got Annabeth, Percy, and Jason the classic American heroes. But then you have: Piper, who is half Cherokee, Leo, who is Hispanic, Frank, who is Chinese-Canadian, Hazel, who is African-American, Reyna, who is Puerto Rican, Coach Hedge, who technically isn’t human so he doesn’t really count in this list. And finally, Nico, who is not only Hispanic but gay.

Riordan has recently added to the “Percy Jackson” world, by writing “The Trials of Apollo” which follows the god Apollo after he is “disowned” by Zeus and forced to live as a mortal. Apollo is bisexual, has had numerous relationships with both men and women, and the characters that he meets throughout the story are of all races and sexualities.

His own son, Will Solace, is gay and is in a committed, loving relationship with Nico, something that the reader gets to see throughout the novel.

The best thing, though, is that these characters are not super stereotypical. They are just a normal (well, as normal as they can get being demi-Gods) group of kids.

The crowning jewel is Riordan’s Norse-mythology centered stories, “Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard.”

The books are as fun-loving and interesting as the ones where Percy appears, and the characters are as wonderfully diverse as one would expect. Magnus Chase, the main character, is homeless. Hearth, his elven friend, is deaf. Blitzen, his dwarf friend, loves fashion and is not categorized as “gay” because of it. Samirah al-Abbas is an Arab American Valkyrie.

Samirah especially, as an Arab American girl, is not treated any differently than any other of Riordan’s leading female characters. She is shown the same amount of respect that Annabeth, Hazel, or Piper is shown. She struggles with balancing her life as a Valkyrie and a devote Muslim, she’s excited about her future with the man she plans on marrying. Riordan brings up Islamophobia, but Magnus, Blitzen, and Hearth (the characters she mainly hangs out with) are never disrespectful about her religion.

Alex Fierro is added in the second book in the series, “The Hammer of Thor” and is a transgender, genderfluid child of Loki.

Alex goes by both male and female pronouns throughout the novel and is constantly telling people that it will be their decision as to whether to be a male or a female that day.

Why is all of this so important though? Who really cares if the cast of characters is diverse or not?

Riordan has come out and said that he wrote the Percy Jackson series for his son and for ADD/ADHD kids to see a reflection of themselves in literature, so it’s not a stretch for me to believe that he’s created these vastly diverse characters to allow children of all races to see themselves in literature as well.

I will admit that most of the novels I read growing up were about white protagonists, and I never thought much of it. I was white, and while I was often annoyed that there were not enough heroines in the stories I was so fond of, I never had much trouble inserting myself into the book. I never had trouble finding characters to identify with.

It was not until I grew up and learned more about the world that I realized that there were thousands of children who grew up without proper representation. There were thousands of children who never once saw a character and went “that looks like me.” There were thousands of children who never had a character to identify with as I did.

It goes without saying that having children see themselves in media, be that books, movies, or TV shows, is important. It boosts confidence and makes it so much easier for children to see themselves as the hero, regardless of what race they are.

But, adding these characters does something else as well. It brings them to life. It makes them real. Suddenly, there is a space for them to exist outside of the news or the stories you heard from a friend about that one time they meant a person with a disability.

For adults, it reminds us to look past the surface. We are constantly bombarded with news and Facebook articles about certain groups of people, and it is often hard, even for me, to separate what I know to be true – that not every person is like that, from what I hear on the news – that literally every person in that minority group is terrible and I should be afraid of them.

It forces us to remember that we do not live in a bubble, and there are people with entirely different experiences and world views, but they should be listened to as well.

And for children, who learn mostly through what they see on television and what they hear adults saying, giving them characters who do not look like or sound like them is so important. Suddenly they are not only learning about the stereotypes associated with a certain group of people, they are learning that that group of people exists outside of stereotypes.

They are learning that any person can be brave and strong. They are learning that not just the straight white character can be the hero, they are seeing themselves in characters, and that is so important.