Storybook Favorites
1. "Flood Myths" https://sites.google.com/view/flood-myths/home
The author's choice to focus on flood-related mythology is a fabulous idea. While the overarching idea of "flooding" may seem simplistic, water (and the excess of it) has been an integral factor in human development throughout history. Take for example the Egyptians -- without the agricultural stability and timekeeping afforded by the flooding of the Nile each wet season, it's unsure whether the Egyptian people would have risen to such a lofty status in terms of architecture, politics, infrastructure, etc. Plus, since much of mythology functions as an attempt to explain origins, and water is directly involved in the human origin (being a requirement of survival), flooding is perfect subject matter for an exploration of myths. Indeed, Hinduism and the Abrahamic faiths heavily feature water as key component of many "origin" stories (i.e. the book of Genesis, the formation of Hindu gods from primordial waters, etc.)
I also really like the idea of making a "Choose Your Own Adventure" storybook like this author did. Any degree of engagement and interactivity makes an online tool much more enjoyable for the audience and, what's more, makes it more fun to put together for the author. Great stuff here.
 |
| A neat shot of the Nile River during its annual flood season. Source: Wikipedia Commons. |
2. "Retirement Home for the Gods" https://sites.google.com/view/retiredgods/home
The big draw for me on this one is the clever spin on an existing piece of mythology. The idea of taking a regal, antiquated idea (like the Greek Pantheon of gods) and splicing it into an unexpected setting with a casual writing style is funny and makes the subject matter feel fresh and accessible. This idea gives me some real Percy Jackson or American Gods vibes with the way it shows powerful deities more as "next-door neighbors" rather than timeless gods.
3. "Tales of Davy Jones' Locker" https://sites.google.com/view/tales-of-davy-jones-locker/home
This one stands out to me for two reasons: 1. Gorgeous, gorgeous pictures, multiple of which are scattered throughout each story, as pertains to the action at hand. Because of this, it feels more like an illustrated picture book than the classic Internet-Wall-of-Text™. 2. Story continuity. While each story is its separate myth, the protagonist remains the same and the action remains continuous. This allows for the tension to build and momentum to carry throughout the project, rather than the author trying to awkwardly restart for each story. Ideally, I'd like to combine this feature with the Choose Your Own Adventure feel of the "Flood Myths" project.
*Also, the table of contents in the intro is written in character and is a really nice touch. I love the writing style of this whole project.
 |
| Blackbeard's head dangles from the rigging. To find out more, read the story of "Blackbeard's Missing Head." |
This is great, Spencer! I am glad you looked at the choose-your-own-adventure project; that was built with something called Twine. If you want to learn more about that this semester, it is so cool: you can use it to create stories like that you can embed in a blog post, or stories you can embed in a webpage, like in that Storybook. Check out the extra credit Tech Tips (those start in Week 2), and you can learn all about Twine! It's free software too, which is even better. And for an example of a Storybook that uses Twine for one big overall adventure, take a look at this one (a combination of a D&D game with Inuit mythology from Alaska): DUNGEONS & DECISIONS: What Will You Choose?
ReplyDeleteBlogging note: for the links, on the web (as opposed to email or print) to use actual link text to let your readers know where they are going if they click; so don't paste in the http blah blah blah; just type some text, highlight the text, and then click the link button; Blogger will prompt you to paste in the URL. In other words, just do for all the links what you did for the image source links. :-)