Storybook Favorites

The first story that I read was called the Retelling the Ramayana. This was a topic that was new to me, but was something that I found extremely interesting, just from the introduction. This is the story of Rama and Sita, which was not clearly stated in the introduction but became easier to understand as the story unfolded. I was very interested in the spin that the writer put on the original tale, in which Rama and Sita were on more of equal footing, instead of the male holding a significant position of power over the woman. I also really liked the layout of the story, which was easy to follow and had very artistic photos.

 

Rama and Sita are Wed from Wikipedia

The second story that I read was called Yama's Hair Salon, which I didn't really know anything about, but was very interested in from the opening sentence. I like that the author chose to use a hair salon as the "place of judgment" and featured some of the prominent women in Hindu history. I also liked that she split the story into sections that are told by all the different characters. It made the story very easy to follow and was more interesting to see all the different points of view. 

The last story that I read was titled Once Upon an Antique Shop. I liked this story because it started with a girl in college who found the antique shop, and that was a character that I was able to identify and relate to a little bit more. The introduction was not completely easy to understand, but once I read the author's notes and a few of the other parts, I understood where the writer was going with her retellings. I liked that she took different fairytales, and put a spin on them with various time periods and locations.