Storybook Favorites

Flower on the road by George Hodan
Source: public domain

The first storybook that caught my attention was SITA, SIDEWALKS, SHADOWS, STARS. I was first intrigued by the title, it sounded mysterious and kind of dark to me even though I still had no clue what the storybook could possibly be about. The way the introduction was written was magnificent. The author wrote it in a way that it continues to grab your attention more and more as you continue to read down the introduction. As I read it out loud to myself, it reminded me of movie trailers from back in the day where there was a narrator telling the story in the background of what the movie was about. Remembering the advice from my English Composition courses, the introduction it the most important part of the story because it is what readers look at first and its what makes readers want to either keep reading the story or not. In the first few sentences, the author introduces the character which is a goddess, it states what the story will be about her stories and struggles and my favorite part is the last sentence of the first paragraph “These are other things which could’ve happened, and perhaps, which should’ve” this line makes me want to keep reading to find out more about what the author was talking about. I also liked that the author used very short sentences, but they were descriptive, it didn’t give me all of the information, but it gave me enough to give me a clue of what this story was about. The layout went with the theme, it is black and white and with the mysterious feel of the story and the word shadow in the title, I think the black and color theme fits it nicely. I also liked the simplicity of the layout.

Sita at Valmiki's hermitage, with her small twin sons (modern bazaar art)
Source: Source: Sita and Twin Sons

 The title of this storybook is Sita: A Song of Valor by Lorraina Robinson. I first read the last word Valor in Spanish which means strength and when we look at the picture it shows a woman caring for her two sons my first thought was that this would be a story about a strong mother. The first thing I saw from this storybook as the picture that is above and on their title page. That is what first piqued my interest in this storybook. It is probably wrong that I first chose this story because of this picture but as a visual person pictures and layout are one of the first things I look at and influence my decision of reading a story or not. I remember when I was younger I choose books based on the visuals of their cover and the contents of the first page of the book. I think deciding on good pictures is also an important aspect of making a storybook and this author succeeds in their choice of pictures. Unlike the other storybook, the introduction of this storybook was written more as if it was chapter one of the story instead of giving like a trailer for the story. I liked how detailed the author wrote her introduction especially in describing the scenery and facial expression of her characters, it helped me as the reader picture what was going on. The introduction didn’t give to much information about the main characters but that served as a cliffhanger to make the reader continue reading the story. The layout of the storybook, I think fits with the pictures the author chose. It is a soft yellow orangish background color that gives a calming aurora and the layout has links on the side to the next chapters that make the story easy to follow along. 

Goddess Lakshmi by artist Raja Ravi Varma
Source: Wikimedia

Once again, I was drawn to the image the author used. I decided not to use the exact picture from the storybook because the link to it was not working but the picture I provided above still shows Lakshmi beauty pretty good. This is the first storybook that had the actual goddess’s name in the title which is Lakshmi. Therefore, by just reading the title I knew very well what the storybook would be about. More than just being a beautiful and color picture what also intrigued me about it is that I had seen her picture many times before. I have no knowledge about Indian gods or goddesses but I have seen some of there figurines and pictures before and I assumed she is one of the more popular ones. With the title, I learned her name and recognizing the picture made me want to know more about her story and what she is about. From all the storybook introductions I read this was the first one that was written in first-person point of view. I found that very interesting because I would get to learn about her story coming from her point of view. It was written as a literal introduction of Lakshmi, introducing herself to us the readers and give us information of what we can look forward to reading. One thing, that was also new in this storybook was that the author provided an author’s note in the bottom of the introduction giving us more information of why they decided chose to make her storybook about Lakshmi and how they will go about in writing the story and what future characters readers can look forward to. The author’s note gave it a personal touch and it was good to know a little bit of what the author was thinking when they wrote this storybook.