Jackals of Africa: Styles Brainstorm

Topic: My storybook would revolve around the animal folklore within Africa. I chose this to be my final topic because I have travelled to Africa and have been to the massive Kruger Park where I saw these animals run wild. I want each story to focus on an encounter with a Jackal, but each encounter will be different. Each story will feature different African animals, but the Jackal will remain constant throughout each story. I could take the direction similar to Jackal Fools Lion Again and Jackal and Monkey that show different interactions with the African Jackal. I would look much deeper into the South African folklore and include different animals within each story.

Bibliography:
Jackal Fools Lion Again - South African Folk-Tales, James Honey (1910)
Jackal and Monkey - South African Folk-Tales, James Honey (1910)
The South African Unit within the un-Textbook is a great place to look for story ideas. In addition, wikipedia is full of facts about Jackals that I could somehow incorporate into the stories.

Possible Styles:

Narration. This could be an interesting way to tell the story of the jackals. I could use the "third person storytelling" style and narrate the story from an outside perspective. Imagine an unknown source looking over a nature reserve and observing what happens as jackals interact with various animals. Each story could be of a jackal outsmarting animals until maybe the most unlikely animal (such as a meerkat) outsmarts the jackal in the final segment. This would be an interesting point of view to write a storybook.

Jackal's Perspective. I could even write the story in the jackal's perspective too. This would obviously be first-person and could turn out to be very useful. It would be interesting to write about how the jackal feels internally when encountering other animals around a nature reserve. I would enjoy giving the jackal a good sarcastic and foolish personality.

Nature Reminiscence. I think one of the best ways to tell the story of jackals is to have different animals within a nature reserve have a meeting, maybe around a watering hole, and tell various stories of the jackals. This could be both entertaining and engaging. Therefore, each story within the storybook would be from a different animal's perspective. With this changing perspective, each story will have its own personality.

Village Festival. My final idea for a storytelling style would be to have some sort of festival within a village. During the festival, the elder could potentially tell various stories of jackals to the youth of the village. He could tell stories that he witnessed while he walked around the savannah during his younger years. This would be interesting because it would be mixing human form with animals. Stories that correlate both humans and nature are always entertaining.

Jackal of Africa