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This is the front page of the Simple English Wikipedia. Wikipedias are places where people work together to write encyclopedias in different languages. We use Simple English words and grammar here. The Simple English Wikipedia is for everyone! That includes children and adults who are learning English. There are 143,604 articles on the Simple English Wikipedia. All of the pages are free to use. They have all been published under both the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 and the GNU Free Documentation License. You can help here! You may change these pages and make new pages. Read the help pages and other good pages to learn how to write pages here. If you need help, you may ask questions at Simple talk.

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Selected article

The Lightning Thief is a 2005 fantasy–adventure novel. It is based on Greek mythology. It was the first young-adult book written by author Rick Riordan. It is the first book in the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series. The series is about the adventures of modern 12-year-old Percy Jackson after he discovers he is a demigod (half-human, half-god). Percy is the son of a mortal woman and the Greek god Poseidon. Percy and his friends go on a quest (adventure) so that a war between the Greek gods Zeus, Poseidon and Hades will not happen.

Riordan finished writing his manuscript in 1994. The Lightning Thief was first bought by Bantam Books in 1997. Bantam sold it to Miramax Books. Miramax published it on June 28, 2005. The book sold more than 1.2 million copies in the next four years. The book won many awards. In 2007, it was on The New York Times Best Seller list for children's books. It was one of the Young Adult Library Services Association's Best Books for Young Adults. It was made into a movie named Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. The movie was first shown in the United States on February 12, 2010. The sequel to this book is The Sea of Monsters.

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Did you know...

From a collection of Wikipedia's articles:

... that Leonard Cohen (pictured) wrote about eighty different drafts of the song "Hallelujah" before finalizing the original version in 1984?

... that Tetris has been downloaded over 170 million times, making it the best-selling video game of all time?

... that Martin Van Buren was the first President of the United States who was born as a citizen of the United States?

... that in May 2017, Puerto Rico filed for the largest government bankruptcy case in American history?

... that before acting, Academy Award winner Martin Landau was hired as a cartoonist for The New York Daily News when he was a teenager?

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