Topic Brainstorm

Mermaids

    When looking at all of the topics to choose from this was one of the first words to jump out at me. Growing up I use to be obsessed with the little mermaid and look read all the tales on it. Plus I watched Disney's "The Little Mermaid" movie all the time and can quote and sing all of the songs. The thought of mermaids has always intrigued me whether they were from movies like the little mermaid, pirates of the Caribbean, harry potter, or just from different stories. I think that this would be a great topic to write about since mermaids have different looks based on different cultures. Like now people think of sirens as a mermaid but for Classical Greeks, they thought of sirens as bird-women. So I might be interested in doing a story on different types of mermaids throughout myth and folklore. The one book I found to potentially look at is The Little Mermaid and other stories by Hans Christian Andersen, translated by R. Nisbet Bain (1893). I would just use the story the little mermaid out of this book and have to research other mermaid stories if I did choose this topic. 

Brothers Grimm

    Brothers Grimm is the next topic that I choose for my storybook. This is also the topic I chose one of one week close to the end of the semester. I have been into the Brothers Grimm stories since I saw the Brothers Grimm movie in 2005. In this, it has many of the town girls disappearing by way of different fairytales and the Grimm Brothers are trying to figure out why so they can stop it. I would like to learn more about the fairytales that are associated with the Brothers Grimm. Yes, I grew up loving the movie but I never really looked into the Brother Grimm stories and got to see what they were actually about. The one source that I found to use is Grimm Fairy Tales by Frances Jenkins Olcott. If I chose this topic I think that I would like to go in a way that the movie did and make different fairy tales tie together to tell a bigger story. 

Celtic Creatures - Banshee's

    Celtic Creatures was something that I did not know if I would be interested in but clicked on it to look into. Once in the topic, I saw that this is where banshees are based and realized that it would be something I might be interested in. Supernatural stuff has always been something that I have really enjoyed reading about especially banshees. I like how they are considered the wailing women because when someone close to them is about to die they scream. I would love to learn more about the folklore about the banshee since I only know things that were said in movies, tv shows, and fiction books. One book I found for this is The Banshee by Elliot O'Donnell (1920). 

A Banshee sitting by a tree. Source: The Irish Post

OU Ghost Stories

    OU Ghost Stories is the last topic that I found to be interesting. I never knew that there were ghost stories on OU and it was crazy that they were at places that I have been to many times on campus. I want to just learn about what the Ghost Stories are, how they came about, and what people think about them on campus. I already read a little on the ghost stories from the OU Daily in an article about the history of them. If I did do this topic though I would look at the stories by Jeff Provine that were mentioned in the Project Idea.