Nico Di Angelo was first introduced in the third book of the Percy Jackson series: The Titan's Curse, by Rick Riordan. When the reader first is introduced to Nico, he was a 10-year-old kid obsessed with a Greek God game called, Mythomagic. He is also introduced with his sister Bianca, who is 12-years-old. Nico, later in the book, finds out that he is the son of the Greek God Hades. Which has its perks, like being able to have skeleton warriors to fight for him. To really get the entirety of Nico you would have to read the books, but there is still one thing I wanted to focus on. In the Heroes of Olympus series, following the Percy Jackson series, Nico Di Angelo came out and said that he had romantic feelings for Percy Jackson. The reader had now found out that Nico is gay (the author of the series also confirmed this).
Normally, this would not have been a big surprise or really too big of a deal to have a gay character in this story. But, there is something that separates this from the rest of the books that have gay characters in them. If you were to go to the store and pick up a book in this series, you would have to go to the children's book section. Granted I have not read every book in the children's section, but there are very rarely gay characters in these books. Yes, there is Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series, but it only eludes to that fact about him it was never really said. The difference with the Heroes of Olympus series is that mostly kids read these books (aside from the young adults who started in the world of Rick Riordan stories when they were kids).
Nico is an openly gay character in a series where the average age of the reader is probably about 12 or 13-years-old. The majority of those reading this are kids who are starting puberty and coming to terms with their own sexuality. To have a character who is about their age openly gay is very important. It shows children who may be gay, that it is OK, and that there are people who have these same feelings. Any book a child picks up, or any story they see on TV, only shows romantic relationships between a girl and a boy. Just think of all of those princess stories or the superhero stories where the male hero saves the day and gets the girl, never the boy. So, to have a gay character in a primarily children's book series brings more diversity to what children see and read about love.
The author of this series, Rick Riordan, showed that being gay is not any less appropriate than being straight. Two guys kissing, or two girls kissing, is on the same appropriate levels as a guy and girl kissing. I hear so many times that same-sex relations are not appropriate for children and that they should be only on shows for teens and older. A kiss is a kiss no matter who does the kissing. Sex is sex no matter who has sex. It should not be about the gender of the two doing this stuff, but the action itself. By writing a gay character into a children's book series, Riordan has made a strong statement that a gay character is not inappropriate for kids to read or see on TV.
