Thursday, January 15, 2015

A Few of My Storybook Favorites

After browsing through the storybooks and reading their introductions, there were several that seemed really interesting, and looking at all of them has made me so excited to start my own Storybook project.

Robin Hood and Maid Marian,
The Book Palace.
My oldest sister MacKenzie graduated with a degree in Classical Culture from OU several years ago, and she took Mythology and Folklore while she was here. She is an awesome writer (and sister), and she occasionally will share with me stories she has started writing. I love getting to read her stories and writing because we share a similar interest in novels, so I immediately looked up her storybook. She did her project over the Tales of Maid Marian and Robin Hood. MacKenzie and I both love a strong and intelligent female character, so I was really excited to find that she had focused her stories on the woman who had captured Robin Hood's heart. She also included an excerpt in her introduction which depicted the initial meeting of Marian and Robin. It was well written and ended with the perfect line, successfully making me want to read all of the stories included in the storybook (and then text her and demand she write a novel immediately).

I also liked Sarah Watson's Girl Power on Mount Olympus. I liked that she focused on the strength of the different goddesses on Mount Olympus. It was fun to have a storybook entirely devoted to strong women. I like that she also chose characters who were all related to each other and explained their connections in the intro. It was interesting background information that made me want to learn even more about the goddesses outside of just the stories she told.

I also really enjoyed Ben Mayer's Fairytales: The Other Side. Exploring fairytales from the point of the antagonist was a pretty creative thing to do. I always think it's interesting to see both sides of a story, and to attempt to find connections with all characters in a story. The introduction was well written and got me excited about reading the revamped fairytales. I also like how he chose to use an investigative journalist as the narrator for the stories. It added a modern element to the stories that was really cool.

1 comment:

  1. I also have a fascination with Robin Hood. I love his noble cause to take from the rich and give to the poor. I think considering the time period Marion depicts a very unlikely strong women figure that makes her own changes in the world as well. I also liked your section about fairytales. I have book of Oscar Wilde's Fairytales and while some can be quite dark, they usually have a twist to make them more interesting and a little odd.

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