Storybook Styles Brainstorming

Topic: I want to do my Storybook on festivals and associated stories from India. There's more than half a dozen Hindu festivals listed on Wikipedia that celebrate particular events from the mythic past. I would like to be fairly far-ranging in the four stories I select, if possible, covering more than just the most popular/famous Hindu festivities and tales. One festival I know I'd like to focus on is Rama Navami, which celebrates both the birth of Rama and his marriage with Sita. These stories are told in The Ramayama, and I think I'd like to focus on Sita's perspective on their meeting and marriage. Another that interests me is the festival Onam celebrated in Kerala. This centers on the homecoming of King Mahabali, who was an asura who wisely ruled a utopian kingdom until forced to the underworld. I've found one version of the story in the Bhagavata Purana, and details of it are also in The Ramayana. Gudi Padwa, a celebration of Brahma's creation of the world as recounted in the Brahma Purana, also looks interesting.

 part of Onam celebration

Arunanand T A, 3/29/2009 (Wikipedia)

Bibliography:
"The Wedding," from The Ramayana: A Modern Prose Version of the Great Indian Epic by R.K. Narayan (Penguin Books, 1977).
canto 8 from Bhagavata Purana, compiled by Anand Aadhar Prabhu (Srimad Bhagavatam).
Stories of Creation: From the Brahma Purana by Shalini Srinivasan (Amar Chitra Katha, 2011).

Possible Styles:
1) Characters visiting festivals. I like the idea of the characters from these ancient stories visiting modern celebrations. First of all, this allows the stories to be written as the characters reflecting back on long-ago events from a different perspective. Second, it allows comments on the festivals, so that each story does two things: retell an ancient tale and describe modern celebrations. I really love the idea of blending folklore and anthropology with this Storybook plan. :)

2) Travel blog. The best format I can think of for a project like this is a "blog" format, where someone is traveling to India to see these celebrations and writes up their thoughts in posts. It also makes incorporating images pretty easy, because they fit well into the personal posts format. Video clips, Instagram, Facebook or Twitter updates, and other media are also easy to incorporate and would make the format look more interactive.

3) Diary. Instead of a public blog, the format could be a private diary. Images and some other extra media are still easy to incorporate, but this is probably a longer, more personal format than blog entries, perhaps more appropriate for the style of storytelling in this project if I go with idea #1.

4) Guided tour. I also thought about writing each story as if narrated by a guide, trying to explain the festivals to a foreign group and update the ancient stories at the same time. This would depend mostly on dialogue, which would be an interesting format, as I find dialogue more difficult to write engagingly than action.