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This is sort of a story... but it's not exactly a story I wrote. Instead it's a story I made with Twine: it's a Nursery Rhyme Maze. You can click here to see a full-screen version.
Like in a maze, there is one exit, and there are various ways to get to that exit. You will start at The Lion and the Unicorn. If you are lucky... very lucky... you will exit the maze in a few clicks. There are also a lot of dead-ends, and when you get to a dead-end, you have to start over.
And, hey, along the way you'll get to read some fun nursery rhymes! :-)
If you're curious what the Twine screen looks like, take a look at the screenshot below. I used the Chapbook style, and for this story I inserted manual breaks so that the rhymes would not be collapsed into one paragraph they way the stories are collapsed in the Aesop Survivor game.
I started with the nursery rhyme about the lion and the unicorn, and then it just grew and grew from there. It was really fun hooking up the nursery rhymes word by word. Mostly I did that using Control-F to search the Gutenberg text of Andrew Lang's nursery rhyme book, along with some other collections (see bibliography below). I just kept adding more and more rhymes, and then I built a way out through the garden gate. So.... SPOILERS below if you want a hint about how to get out.
SPOILERS. If you want to get out of the maze, you need to find the garden gate. The dog Blue Bell can take you there, or you can go through Mary Gray's house (there are lots of ways to get to her house!), or you might get some help from buttered cake. :-)
Bibliography:
The Nursery Rhyme Book by Andrew Lang: Robin and Richard were two pretty men ~ Bessy Bell and Mary Gray ~ "Hie, hie," says Anthony ~ Mary had a pretty bird ~ Daffy-Down-Dilly ~ In the month of February ~ The lion and the unicorn were fighting for the crown ~ If all the world was apple-pie ~ Come, butter, come ~ There was a crooked man, and he went a crooked mile ~ I had a little nut-tree, nothing would it bear ~ Elizabeth, Elspeth, Betsy, and Bess ~ Little Tom Tucker ~ Three blind mice, see how they run! ~ Did you see my wife, did you see, did you see ~ Hush-a-bye, baby, on the tree top ~ To market, to market, to buy a plum-cake ~ Rock-a-bye, baby, thy cradle is green ~ Bat, bat (clap hands) ~ "Pussy-cat, pussy-cat ~ See-saw sacradown ~ Dear, dear! what can the matter be? ~ As Tommy Snooks and Bessy Brooks ~ Pussicat, wussicat, with a white foot ~ Dance to your daddy ~ Hey! diddle, diddle ~ Cushy cow, bonny, let down thy milk ~ As soft as silk, as white as milk ~ Little Boy Blue, come, blow your horn! ~ Baa, baa, black sheep
The Real Mother Goose illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright. Donkey, donkey, old and gray ~ On Saturday night ~ Hark, hark! the dogs do bark!
The Nursery Rhymes of England illustrated by W. B. Scott: Eggs, butter, bread ~ Clap hands, clap hands ~ I had a little dog, and his name was Blue Bell
Image source; Baby's Own Opera, book cover art by Walter Crane. The Lion and the Unicorn illustration by L. Leslie Brooke.
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