"Spin Me A Yarn"
The Swan Princess
This photo was taken from the Grimm section of the storybook and depicts a scene from the text.
The first storybook that caught my eye in the long list to choose from was one called "Spin Me A Yarn." This book is about the textile stories of Greek, Grimm, and Chinese mythology. This topic is completely new to me, as I am only truly familiar with the major characters and stories in Greek and the Brothers Grimm mythology, and I am woefully unfamiliar with Chinese mythology in any capacity. Even though I have a base knowledge of Greek and Grimm, I have zero experience reading textile stories of any origin. The title of this book gave me a hint as to what the stories were about, but didn't give everything away, which intrigued me. I think a good title is one that is subtle enough to make you want to pick up the book, but also one not completely unrelated to the story, so this was good. The introduction page was written like the beginning of a novel with lots of dialogue, which I thought was a unique and exciting way to grab the readers' attention and something I think I will try to do with my own storybook. Another thing the author did well was that she wove in what the stories were actually going to be about with subtle details, such as the line where the shopkeeper says "Our wares are so rare they’re mythological, and we guarantee every item’s authenticity." As far as layout and design go, the background is a little distracting and the layout is a bit busy. The author chose to put the photo about the text at the very bottom of the story, which I thought was a little weird. In addition, almost the entire background is comprised of photos. I am a fan of a nice background picture if it isn't distracting, but the designs were conflicting and made it hard to focus on the text at times. I do think I might mimic the page navigation layout for my story, but I might do some tweaking.
"Death's Final Story"
The second storybook that I picked from the bunch was one titled "Death's Final Story." I was immediately intrigued by not only the title, but what I thought the story was going to be about. I do not know any lore about Death, save for minimal stories of the Grim Reaper, but I'm not sure if that counts. What I found was that this storybook was not actually about the mythology behind Death itself, but rather the retelling of another story with which I am completely unfamiliar. The actual story is one of a cruel monk who wanted to become king of the Fairies but was killed by a goblin and taken by Death. I will say that the introduction was very strong and held my attention well, but the actual stories were a bit hard to follow if you weren't already familiar with the original text I think. In the author's note, it was stated that the character of death was added to tie all the stories together, which I think is a fun strategy to use when telling mythological stories from a different point of view. The overall layout of this storybook was nice and simple, which I wasn't mad at. There were photos relevant to the stories at the top of the pages, but there were no photos behind the text, which I appreciated because it was easy to read. I think that is somewhat the design I will go for when I write my own storybook, but I'm not entirely sure yet. I thought the page navigation was smooth and made sense for the most part. One thing I thought that could have been done differently would be to have a more distinct separation between the body of the text and the author's notes. As it is, the author's note is simply another paragraph on the page, which doesn't really make sense to me. Other than that, I really enjoyed the stories and thought they were done well.
"Real Housewives of Greek Mythology"
The last story I chose from the list was one titled "Real Housewives of Greek Mythology." I happen to be a fan of trashy reality television as an escape from the crisis state of the world, so this immediately spoke to me. This storybook does happen to be something I am a bit familiar with. I grew up reading the Percy Jackson series and familiarizing myself with the major gods and goddesses of Greek mythology. I love the goddesses and their lore, so I am definitely familiar with the main characters in this iteration of the Real Housewives franchise. The title of this story was quite obvious, but it was funny so it was still intriguing. I knew from the get-go that this was going to be a more light-hearted retelling of the tales of the Greek goddesses, and I thought that was a nice way to go about it. The introduction of the storybook was very helpful in understanding what the story was going to feel like. The author introduced the "housewives" like they would do in a promotional commercial for a new season of the show. The author gave background and key information about the women and really did a nice job of setting the scene for the actual story. The whole story is set up to run like a script from the show, which I found to be a very creative way of writing and made it really stand out from the rest. I love the idea of making a show or movie script for my own storybook, but I don't know if I will actually end up doing so. The design of the site is clean and simple, but still on-brand for the show. The titles are broken down into "episodes" so the story flows nicely. The author chose to keep minimal photos, which I thought was nice, given the fact that the scripts were the main focus of the pages. Overall, I loved several elements from this storybook, and I may choose to borrow some.
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