Storybook Favorites and Inspirations

Lifelong Devotion

(Women performing the Karva Chauth rituals from Krishna Suthar's Storybook Lifelong Devotion)

         I had never heard of the Karva Chauth tradition before seeing this Storybook.  The title did a good job of summing up the idea of the tradition.  The introduction was extremely informative and I know completely understand the tradition and it’s origins.  As soon as I understood what Karva Chauth I wanted to learn more about what exactly goes on and the intro made me excited to see how they would explain this tradition through different stories.  The layout of the pages was very clean and coherent.  It was easy to navigate and made it so I didn’t even think about the layout as I read through the stories.  The pictures fit perfectly with the story lines and did a great job illustrating her text.  I also liked how they had all of the info for the pictures at the bottom of the page rather than under the image.  Finally, this was a very creative way to tell the stories of Indian epics and it gave me inspiration for my own project.

Indian Horror Story

(Image of Yash from Hoang Truong's Storybook, Indian Horror Story)

         The title right away captured my attention and perfectly summed up what the Storybook was about.  The introduction drew me in and to be honest I couldn’t stop reading.  Unfortunately, It didn’t really sum up what they were writing about.  It jumped right into the story line.  I didn’t know what Indian epics he was going to pull from or how he was going to use them.  It made me realize I should include how I am going to use the Indian epics I choose.  The layout was clean but it would have been nice to title one of the labels as Introduction because it took a while for me to find which one was supposed to be the intro.  The images were intriguing and well placed.  They definitely helped illustrate the stories and captured the feel of the stories.  This was very well written and I loved reading the stories.

Ganesha’s Enchanted Journal

(Image of Ganesha from Jordan Wiebe's Storybook Ganesha's Enchanted Journal)

         The title definitely summed up the topic of the storybook.  I have heard of Ganesha before but not enough to extensively know about his character. The introduction did a great job of introducing Ganesha and summing up how the layout of the storybook would go.  The setup of this storybook was different than the others and provided an interesting way to tell the Indian Epics. The design was simple and easy to follow. It gave me a different perspective in to how to set up my own storybook.