Storybook Favorites

So I have to confess that these Storybooks aren't my favorites, since that word implies that I read all the Storybooks. But they were my favorites out of the ones that I read, and I was really impressed by the ingenuity and creativity shown by all three authors in creating their themes and stories.

(Touching the Skye)

I was interested in Touching the Skye because of its title--my brain immediately jumped to Skye, Scotland, so the title did really well at hinting at the Storybook's topic--and then once I clicked over I got caught up in the story! I love folklore about the various water-fairies (or any kind of fairies, really) so it was a nice surprise to find so much of it here, and the Introduction was really compelling and original, even if it didn't hint so much at the folklore part of the story, so I wanted to keep reading even before I knew there were fairies! Plus the pictures are beautiful (did you hear my sigh? I just sighed), and I like how the layout really lays all the focus on the story, making it front and center, and leaves no distractions for the reader. That's certainly something I'll keep in mind for my own Storybook.

Maggie's Heptameron also caught my eye because of its title (note to self: think of a catchy title), because I was so interested in the unit on the Decameron earlier. I liked how the layout is divided into the different pages of a book, making it seem more like an actual manuscript. And the pictures are all really apropos for the stories, and relevant to the times! The twist in the story is really interesting--an undercover noble in the kitchens, bored with her high station, eavesdropping and finding out many things about the household she wouldn't know otherwise. I'm always getting into trouble because of eavesdropping and prying into people's lives, and I, too, find that when life gets too predictable I have to shake it up a bit, so I could relate...

(Image of a hotel foyer, from 3D House-Hotel)

Last, but certainly not least, I found Hero Visa Pending hilarious. I'm always interested in the ways that various people portray Hades (both the place and the god), and the idea that the afterlife involves a bureaucracy (hell is paperwork, I don't care what else anyone says, especially the finicky stuff!) is just spot on. All the rest of the worldbuilding is great, and I really liked the poem at the beginning--and the names of the stories themselves--and it's all set up really, really well in the introduction. I also noticed that the colors of all the pictures worked really well with the background--I've been working with that in my own blogging, as well, because I've noticed that if a picture has colors that don't work with the background I get thrown out of whatever I'm reading, and it takes me a moment to recover, which obviously isn't ideal for any reader.

These are some examples that really caught my eye, but I found a lot of other good ideas about what I want to do--and what I don't want to do--from clicking through a lot of other Storybooks on my way to these. I'm excited to start the project, now!