Creating Online Stories with MyStorybook

The website, my storybook.com, is a user-friendly site for teachers to create short stories in the target language for students. In fact, it is so easy to use, that you may want to consider it for substitute plans when you need to be absent from school.

On the left is the cover of a short story that I wrote for my Spanish 1 students after 4 days of class and a 4-day Labor Day weekend. It contains many repetitions of quiere, tiene, está, hay, and other high frequency words. Click on the link "Paco quiere un mono" to view the storybook.

After creating the story, you will need to publish it in order to be able to share it. Sharing is as simple as copying the URL as well as sharing it on social media. 

There is a main page on which you will create the title page, add text, backgrounds, and characters. There is a limited collection of characters from which to choose but there is an option to upload your own images to use in your story. There is also a tab to draw directly on the page, which is what I used to make the thought bubble on the front page.

After adding text to the story page, you can change the font, the size of the font, where it is positioned on the page, the color, background color, and more. One thing to remember when using special characters in the text, is you will need to return to the text box from the icon on the left because you can't add accents and other special characters when you are typing on the storybook page.

Creating the characters is fun because you can change the hairstyle, the color of  hair and skin, the eye color and expressions, the mouth, the clothing color and style, the pants color and style, and the shoes. 

The options are somewhat limited but it still allows for creativity without providing too many choices that you are overwhelmed with the choices. (It would be nice if there were more than one hairstyle choice for the female characters.)

There are outdoor background scenes in a forest, city, beach, etc, and several indoor choices too. 

(After putting the characters on the background scene of the forest, it reminded me of the story I use from Martina Bex named "La muchacha y la ardilla." I'm considering using this website to illustrate the story that my students create when we do this unit OR creating a parallel story with illustrations for them to read AFTER they create their story.) 

At present, it is a free website, but as we know, that could change in the future as it grows and includes more choices. If you want an ebook download and a pdf of your story, the charge is $5.00.

I'd love it, if after reading this, you create a story, and then share it with me on Twitter: @sonrisadelcampo 😊

HAVE FUN CREATING!