Storybook: SAMPLE WEEK 3 STORYBOOK ASSIGNMENT

Below is a sample of what you will send to me via email for your Week 3 Storybook assignment.

Animal Stories from Africa

Topic. My Storybook will be about animal stories from Africa. My goal is to find four different animals from four different African storytelling traditions. One story I know I want to include is the Ugandan story, "The Story of the Hippos." I do not think I will have any trouble finding stories about different animals from the different African story collections which I have found online.

Bibliography: "The Story of the Hippos," from The King of the Snakes and Other Folk-Lore Stories from Uganda, by Mrs. George Baskerville (1922). Web address: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/baskerville/king/king.html

Animals as storytellers. This is a logical choice for my Storybook - I think I definitely want to have the animals be the storytellers. Since all of the stories have animals in them, I could choose a character from each story as the storyteller. Or I could invent some animal, like say a wise old elephant, who tells all four of the stories. Either way, I know I want the animals to the storytellers in my Storybook. I looked at a Storybook of Nigerian folktales, where the animals were storytellers, and it was great.

Festival. I like the idea that the animals could be attending a festival and tell their stories on that occasion. It would need to be some natural occasion, like maybe the "Full Moon Festival" or the summer solstice or the winter solstice... I would need to think about that, too, since part of Africa is in the southern equator, so the seasons are different!

Journey. A journey could work, too! I saw the most amazing film about bird migrations, and many of the birds fly all the way to Africa. I saw that one of the Storybooks was about birds telling stories along their migration path. I think that could work for my project, too! Maybe I would try to focus on stories with birds in them if I decide to use that. Or perhaps the animals could be on a journey in quest or water, or finding a new home because human settlements have driven them out.

Tour guide. Even though I want the animals to be the storytellers, I guess there could be humans, too - like there could be a human tour guide who is someone that the animals trust, so in the presence of that tour guide - and only that tour guide! - the animals are willing to tell their stories. Also, one of the Storybooks I looked at had an African parrot taking birds from other countries on a tour of Africa. I liked that!

Found objects. I like the idea that the animals could tell stories that are prompted somehow by things they find on their journey - it might be a physical landmark, like a watering hole or an unusual rock, or perhaps they would find a bird feather or the shed skin of a snake that would prompt them to tell a story about that bird or that snake.

Cultural detail. I like the idea of adding cultural details to the stories, because I would like to learn more about the geography of Africa, languages, climate, plus more information about the different animal species. I absolutely need to include a map, for example, because if you were to show me a map of Africa, I wouldn't even be able to show just where Uganda is on the map. Sad but true!

Word count: 571