Week 1 Storybook Favorites

One project I looked at was The Ancient City of Ayodhya. I picked this one because I am very aware of the contemporary history of Ayodhya (not a happy history), and the way this Storybook works is that there are stories from ancient Ayodhya plus a final story that is exactly about the modern city of Ayodhya in India and the riots that took place there. I think it is cool that the author of this Storybook found a way to connect the ancient stories to something that is modern and real and in the news today.

The next Storybook I looked at was RateMyRishi.com. Who can resist the title of this project, eh? This student took some stories about gurus and wrote them up like professor ratings at RateMyProfessors.com. She even made it look just like RateMyProfessors.com with avatars and all kinds of layout details so that it looks just right, in addition to being written in just the right style. It was really funny and I liked reading the stories in this way. This would get top marks for creativity from me - wow!

The last one I looked at was Animal Tales from India to Oklahoma. I will confess that the Storybooks which connect to Oklahoma are often my favorites! This Storybook is about a squirrel in India, in ancient India that is (this particular squirrel is over 2000 years old) who had a series of supernatural adventures that brought him to Oklahoma, to the OU campus in fact (gotta love those squirrels), and he spends his time telling Indian stories to random OU students who stop to listen. How cool! There was also a really beautiful image on the cover of this one, so I have provided a screenshot of that below. The story of Rama and the squirrel is one of my favorite legends in the epics, too.

I liked all three of these projects so much — plus, they are so different from each other! Three cheers for creativity and originality!

Here is a screenshot of the Indian squirrel Storybook; the image is Rama and the Squirrel: