For my storybook project, I decided to retell the stories of the Brothers Grimm by changing the setting to Oklahoma. I thought that those stories would be most fun to work with because they have good characters and because they are familiar to most people.
I used stories from the Grimm Brothers unit from class. I retold the stories of Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Cap, the Town Musicians of Bremen, Rumpelstiltskin, and the Hare and the Hedgehog.
The idea behind my storybook was that the Grimm Brothers wind up in Oklahoma through some sort of magical event. As they wander through the forests of Oklahoma, trying to find their way home, they meet the characters that are in their fairy tales. Since many of the Grimms' tales seemed to involve forests, this seemed like a logical way for them to meet the characters.
My storybook contains different stories of the Grimms' adventures in Oklahoma with all of the characters. I didn't explain every detail of how the Grimms came to Oklahoma or how they left because I wanted to leave some things to the imagination. However, the general idea is that they wound up in Oklahoma and met all the characters. Then, they returned home to Germany and wanted to tell stories about their visit to Oklahoma, but they decided that the stories they had heard and seen were too crazy for people to believe. They then changed the stories to seem more realistic, and these are the stories that we know today as the Grimms' fairy tales.
I made my own images for the web pages, since I couldn't find any that fit the topic terribly well. I have a little bit of experience with computer graphics, so this project was a fun way for me to experiment a little bit.
I chose this topic because I have always enjoyed traditional fairy tales, and I've always liked "fairy tale with a twist" stories. I wanted to do something different, and this was something that I hadn't seen before. Since I've lived in Oklahoma all my life and sometimes get teased about some of the stereotypes of Oklahoma's residents, I thought it would be fun to use some of those ideas in my storybook project.
I think my storybook is interesting and educational for the class. Also, I hope they will think it's funny. I tried to incorporate a few things from the history of Oklahoma into my stories, so that I was not just making fun of the stereotypes of Oklahoma to make my stories funny.
Here are some of the web sites I used for my project:
Website: Tales Collected by the Brothers Grimm
Weblink: http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~wbarker/fairies/grimm/.
From Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Household Tales, trans. Margaret Hunt (London: George Bell, 1884), 1:221-224.
This was the site where I found my basic stories.
Website: Oklahoma Historical Society
Weblink: http://www.ok-history.mus.ok.us/enc/landrun.htm
This site was where I found some of the factual information about the land run that I used in story five.
Website: Your Oklahoma
Weblink: http://youroklahoma.com
I used this site to find ideas on how to add an Oklahoma slant to my story and to check some facts.