Storybook Favorites

Yama's Collected Souls. This was the first storybook that caught my interest. There was just something about having the word "souls" in the title that attracted me. This storybook contains four stories told by Yama, "Lord of Death", recounting the lives and deaths of four of the more interesting souls he has obtained over the years. Now I am not familiar with any Indian epics or stories beyond recognizing the names of some of them. While reading through the introduction, I had to look up the names of the characters mentioned to have a better context of what I was reading, and I'm sure if I had read any of the epics, the brief introductions of the characters Maricha and Jatayu would make more sense to me. The introduction seemed to do a good job in keeping my interest with the author's writing style giving Yama a kind of believable voice or speaking manner. My only complaint with it is the lack of a brief introduction for the other two characters to give a better idea into what each will delve. As for the layout of the stories and website as a whole, I like the idea of having the images on the sides rather than the center and having the text wrap around them. That is something I would consider when writing my storybook.

Image of Yama

Web Source: Wikipedia

Death's Final Story. Lost in looking for another Indian Epics storybook, I searched through Myth-Folklore to find this as the second storybook that caught my interest. The personification of death is a familiar topic with many different versions across different cultures and modern media. The writing in this introduction seems a little clumsy to me, but it still manages to provide a bit of background to the world, personality to this incarnation of Death, and a transition into the first story. Though this did not keep my interest in wanting to read the stories, I do like the version of Death that this author created: a Death with a seemingly human personality that inherited its job and title from its predecessors. As for the physical layout of the pages, I did like the choice of pictures if not their layout at the top of the page. That may just be a personal preference of mine. Another thing I liked was the inclusion of links to concepts of inspiration in the author's notes. The ones I clicked on seemed to give a bit more understanding as to some of the topics about which this author wrote. Doing similar like adding links to words or concepts that may be out of place to or take to long to explain in a story may be a good idea for me to consider in the future.

Black and white image of Death standing near a barren tree

Web Source: Warrior Outrageous (formerly Pookitoots) on Flickr by an unknown photographer

Afterlife Anger Management. After having trouble finding interesting storybooks in Myth-Folklore with images that have been labeled for reuse, I went back to searching through Indian Epics and came across this humorous title for my final pick. Once again I will say that I am not too familiar with Indian epics and stories, though I have read some literature that involved rakshasas in the past. The title on the page I found this storybook was actually Demon Anger Management, so in that case, the title makes sense from what little I understand of rakshasas. The introduction is quite humorous by how it introduces its characters and their stories in a group anger management session with Dr. Phil. I feel it does a good job in how it introduces the characters to where even I who knows nothing about them can have a decent understanding of who they are and what happened to them. The navigation of the pages as a whole is easy enough being located in a noticeable place. My only issue may have been the image placement. For the amount of text there was and how some of the images seem a bit too small, it may have been better to place the images in the middle of the story with the text wrapped around them. Besides that, I found this storybook and site to be quite pleasing.

Image of a statue of Ravana

Web Source: Wikipedia