Topic Brainstorm

 1. South Carolina Storybook

    For this idea, my storybook would take place in my beloved home state, South Carolina. Over at Freebookapalooza, under Parsons. Folklore of the Sea Islands, South Carolina, there are tons of short stories written with improper grammar/spelling that emphasizes the strong southern dialect in the region. I like this style of writing (although in some of them it can be a lot and hard to understand). However, the stories here are mostly unrelated, and I'd like to connect all of my stories through a theme besides just the geography. Perhaps this theme can be something of traditional or present day South Carolinian culture. I'll have to give it some more thought.

2. Japanese Fairy Tale Storybook

    Sticking with my own culture and interests, I could use the resources from Hasegawa. Japanese Fairy Tale Series to inspire a storybook that takes from Japanese tales. I have looked into a few already, and I love the mythical creatures in many of these stories such as The Serpent with Eight Heads and Ryujin the dragon king & sea god. I would love to read more stories like these, and perhaps I can create a similar story which revolves around such mythical creatures and their interactions with humans for my project.

3. Biography Style Storybook

    In week 1, I was particularly inspired by one storybook from a previous student with what I thought was an interesting concept. Draupadi Born from Fire followed one single character, Draupadi, starting with her birth and then telling significant stories throughout her life in chronological order. This way, reading the whole storybook is like reading a biography of one character. Maybe if I come across a particularly interesting character with a long backstory in one of my future readings, I can do more research into this character and do a similar storybook.

4. Creation Story

    I saw this listed under Project Ideas and I knew I had to add it to my list. I love creation stories, especially because I am studying astrophysics and my ideal specialization is extragalactic astronomy/cosmology, which deals with the early formation of the universe and galaxies. My take on a creation story for the whole universe would probably be something that is close to our current understanding of how the universe actually formed, but with characters as representations of the fundamental astronomical components and processes that took place in the early universe. Con: this one may get a little complicated and require me to do more research in published astronomy journals than research in fun, fictional stories...

Image Source. Free ClipArt image of a storybook