Remember, the times when you would just gather around your dad or uncle, just to hear a story you have heard some thousand times before. You shudder and shiver at every screech, tremble at the fake sound of ghostly wind, and shut your eyes tight at every twisted turning point in the story, over and over again. The stories never end there, they haunt your everyday and every dream, every game and every mood.
One such story for me was 'The Golden Hand", It was about a princess who loses her hand, and gets a golden hand, but the wicked stepmother takes it away from her because of her greed and jealousy. Fortunately for me both my Dad and my uncle were awesome storytellers and they loved all the attention they can get. While my dad was the serious storyteller with measured moral, wit and humor sifted in his stories; my then unmarried uncle told stories with elaborate visual and sound effects - from the door screeching, the hand out of the grave to the wind reeling in through the windows. I would have dreams that pop in, like, Superman hiding in my closet or being taken on roller-skates to escape thugs. Weird or What. Yet for someone below ten, that's how life goes, hard to differentiate between dreams and reality, and harder to to abstain from restless imagination.
Just the slightest memory of such stories could take me to a different age, when things were simpler, happier and carefree. I have a friend who was compiling stories for children, helping her in the process made me realize, how much I love those simple tales. I could read them however bad the story is or whatever condition the book is in. They were short, simple on the mind, a lot relaxing and best of all they always have a moral. So why not create a collection of such stories that could be from anywhere in the world, from mythology to fables to everyday experiences, making reading effortless and enjoyable.
Fable Fantasies is the result of that thought. Simple reading for children of all ages:)
No comments:
Post a Comment