Storybook Favorites: Twists on Familiars

     Stories, in all mediums, are a special kind of art, a special kind of tender magic that can bring out forgotten memories and ignored feelings and the strength to be brave. And this amazing magical art is intrinsically human. It is so fundamentally ours! We have been creating and telling stories for as long as we could communicate with each other in any meaningful way.

    How wonderful it is we get to create and share and enjoy our own magic of which there are no limits! 

    I was able to read many stories previous students of the Mythology and Folklore course have written. I was so lucky to be able to read such wonderful, diverse works and all for free!

    Here are my three favorite storybooks written by previous students.

1. Chronicles of Hades: Adventures in the Underworld

Cerberus with the Gluttons in Dante's Third Circle of Hell. William Blake. Source: Cerberus - Wikipedia

    Chronicles of Hades was one of the first storybooks I read. (You can read it here!) I chose it because the content was very familiar to me: Greek mythology. This mythology holds a large spot in my heart because it was something that kicked off my love of writing and deepened my love for reading.

    In recent years, it's become very popular to rewrite Greek mythology, most likely due to the immense popularity of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series in the mid-2000s. The tale of Hades and Persephone has been one of the most popular myths to get a makeover. I was delighted to find, then, the Chronicles of Hades went over not only a revised version of their myth but also went over Hades's childhood and included a third story about the judges of the Underworld.

    The tone in the Introduction and Home page was familiar with a sarcastic but eager edge to it. And what a surprise! Not only was the voice of each story delightfully consistent with the voice of the Home and Intro pages, but the format was that of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story.

    The stories really did feel like an adventure! The first two stories, Origin and Persephone, let the reader's head hop the characters in them. That is, the reader had a choice of which god to view the events from. While I loved that, it's also what made the third one my favorite!

    The Judges differs from its two predecessors. Instead of telling a story in the same manner as previous, it puts the reader as a sort of guest judge on the Underworld's judges panel. Alongside Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus, the reader is tasked with helping to judge three different souls: Sisyphus, Achilles, and Ixion. The reader can choose to vote for the soul to go to Tartarus, Asphodel Meadows, or Elysium, and before each case, there's the option to bail the whole thing!

    Overall, the entire storybook is a really fun and engaging read. I highly recommend reading all three stories.

2. Nursery Rhymes: Connecting the Dots by Brianna M. Haley

    

"Pussy-cat, where have you been?". Arthur Rackham. 1913. (Source: Flickr)

    The topic of nursery rhymes is familiar to me as well, although somewhat in a more distant way as I haven't read or revisited them for years now. In each story, Haley takes several different nursery rhymes and finds their common points, or dots if you will, and weaves them together to create an entirely new story. (You can read her stories here! Connecting the Dots) These new stories still hold the same simplicity and minimalism as the original sources, something I really enjoyed!

    True to form, the only details within the stories were those that were both important and relevant to the plot with no extraneous words or descriptions. It brought back memories of days and nights when I was a young child reading fairy tales and being told and sung nursery rhymes. The whole time I was reading Haley's stories, I was immersed in nostalgia. I swear I could smell the pages of my nursery rhyme books!

    Unlike the previous and next storybooks, there was no Introduction page. Instead, Haley has links and short summaries of each story on the Home page. She does compensate for not having the Intro page by providing a fourth story though!

    Of Haley's stories, I liked the third one, Georgey's First Kiss, the best. It's a short, sweet love story about Georgey (a reference to the nursery rhyme Georgey Peorgey), a romantic little boy who just wants his first kiss. The story has a tender ending, and despite not really knowing Georgey or Lucy, through Haley's writing, it's hard not to develop a soft fondness for the two children. The images Haley uses fit perfectly with the tone and feel of the story as well.

    The other three stories are all wonderful, and I recommend spending the time to give them all a read!

3. Garrett's Storybook: Young Jamie and the Tasks of Titania

Take the Fair Face of a Woman, and Gently Suspending, With Butterflies, Flowers, and Jewels Attending, Thus Your Fairy is Made of Most Beautiful Things. Sophie Gengembre Anderson. Source: Wikimedia Commons

    Young Jamie's story (which you can read here!) centers on the fairie section of Celtic mythology, another mythology with which I'm familiar. My initial interest in this storybook was because it held this subject. The title was also of interest to me because if there's anything to be learned from fairie lore, it's fairies giving people tasks is always because of a deal, and deals with them are always high-risk, high-reward ventures.

    Before I get too far, here's a fair warning to anyone planning to read Young Jamie: the storybook isn't complete. I think it's still worth a read but be prepared to be left on a cliffhanger.

    The story consists of five parts in addition to an introduction page. (Six parts are listed, but the sixth just has an image, no text.) The main character is Jamie, a 10-year-old boy who investigates the village's missing children after his best friend is abducted. My favorite section is actually the last one: Part 5: Jamie and the Cave of Secrets.

    In this part, there are the side characters of a selkie and his love. I really liked how the selkie lore was given the same makeover as many Greek myths have been given (i.e. the selkie wasn't an evil monster, just a selkie who got a little too impatient in wanting his wife to move in with him). That interaction between the selkie and Jamie was one of my favorites within the storybook. My favorite bit was the end of Part 5. One of the characters close to Jamie is revealed to be in cahoots with the fairies! 

    I would've loved to have seen where it went and how the story overall would've ended.

    The story's voice is fascinating to me. Usually when I read there gets a point where the words disappear, and it becomes a movie in my mind's eye. What was amazing about this story is how it only partially achieved that effect. Instead of seeing a smooth, live-action performance in my head, I saw more of an animatic movie.

    For those unfamiliar, an animatic is essentially a moving storyboard. It's gained a lot of popularity on YouTube in recent years and has sort of becoming its own art style/storytelling mode. It's choppy and the figures aren't always the cleanest (like I said, moving storyboard), but it has a lot of charm in its own way.

    This animatic-like view of the story was set in motion by the young, innocent tone of Jamie and the excellent use of images. The images were always inserted in natural breaks within the section's narration, and they always gave a perfect snapshot of either what was going on or what a character looked like. In that way, it was almost like the author was giving the reader a brief snapshot of the mental images taking up Jamie's head at that very moment in the narration.

    Previously, I said the storybook was unfinished. I'm really disappointed it is. I think the ending would've been fantastic. However, even though the author left it unfinished, the voice and outstanding use of images alongside the plot make this storybook worth reading anyway.