Two of the Coolest Kickstarter Projects EVER

Sadly, the windows of opportunity to support these two projects have already closed (and if I had found them earlier, I would have supported them quite enthusiastically)—but the good news is that they both went WAY over their fundraising goals and will be available to all of us who missed the boat!

I love finding stuff like this because they’re so creative that they make me feel like I, too, have the potential to be more creative. So, before I head outside to frolic in the sunshine (the temperature is above freezing here! It’s a tropical paradise outside!), I thought I would share them in case they have the potential to give your creative juices a bit of a power punch, too.

Exhibit A: A “Chooseable-Path Adventure” of Shakespeare’s Hamlet – with PIRATES!

When I found this project, my jaw dropped in a fit of awesomeness. I discovered it because I like to read through the hilariously inappropriate comics written by The Oatmeal, and he (Matthew Inman) contributed to the illustrations in the book—along with tons of other talented (and funny) artists and illustrators.

This book, entitled To Be Or Not To Be: That Is The Adventure, is “80,000 words of comedy and mayhem” and, just like those books that you may remember from your childhood in which an adventure is chosen (I had no idea that the actual phrase was subject to copyright!), you get to make choices that shape the story. You even get to pick which character you want to be.

Ahem:

“You can play as Hamlet, his girlfriend Ophelia, and his dad Hamlet Sr, who (SURPRISE) dies on the first page and becomes a ghost. And then we make fun of you for dying on the first page, but you can become a ghost and must INVESTIGATE YOUR OWN MURDER that you TOTALLY SLEPT THROUGH because you got SLEEPY IN AN ORCHARD. (Shakespeare wrote this part, I can’t help it.)”  

This gem of Shakespearean blasphemy will be available via Breadpig in May. (I have the page bookmarked…)

Exhibit B: A Girl-Power Adventure Starring Ada Lovelace and Mary Shelley! They start a detective agency called “Wollstonecraft” as kids!!

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but my degrees are in English Literature, so when I saw this project, the Lit Nerd wheels went into overdrive in my brain…I gasped and immediately replied to my husband (who had e-mailed the link to me) by saying “WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS!!!” (and yes, the full caps and exclamation marks of enthusiasm were in full force).

I love the ideas for this adventure series so much that I don’t even know where to start. Here’s part of the synopsis from Kickstarter page:

This is a pro-math, pro-science, pro-history and pro-literature adventure novel for and about girls, who use their education to solve problems and catch a jewel thief.  Ada and Mary encounter real historical characters, such as Percy Shelley, Charles Babbage, Michael Faraday, and Charles Dickens – people whom the girls actually knew.  If Jane Austen wrote about zeppelins and brass goggles, this would be the book.

(Just as a side note, when my husband teaches Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to his first-year university students, he does a hilarious impression of a terrified Percy Shelley, who took off shrieking at Villa Diodati after the storytelling session that sparked the idea for Frankenstein… These books won’t get to that point in Mary Shelley’s life, I’m sure, but if they do, I would love to see the illustration of that!)

I will have to hunt for these books on Amazon when they become available to the general public. (If you find them somewhere, preferably somewhere that ships to Canada, please let me know!)

*****

The sunshine is calling my name. Happy Saturday!