Star Wars Block – Over 100 Words Every Fan Should Know illustrated by Peskimo (book review).

‘Star Wars Block – Over 100 Words Every Fan Should Know’ is a new children’s ‘Star Wars’ title from Abrams, specifically their kids publishing imprint Abrams Appleseed. Designed like a word and picture book for helping young children to read, the book contains illustrations of scenes that range all the way from the slave boy Anakin fixing his pod racer in the deserts of Tattooine in ‘The Phantom Menace’ to the confrontation between Rey and Kylo Ren outside Starkiller Base in ‘The Force Awakens’.

The illustrations are by Bristol-based husband and wife team David and Jodie Peskimo, who have been illustrating together since 2004 and whose style is both colourful and wonderfully simple. Imagine the style of Tartovsky’s ‘Clone Wars’ animation, but cleaner and friendlier and you’re about there.

This is a wedge of a book which is made up of fifty ‘full’ cardboard pages and, between each of those, is a die-cut cardboard page to flip open, which more or less doubles the page count. Over a quarter of the book is made up of illustrations from ‘A New Hope’, which means that even though the book covers all eight films up to and including ‘Rogue One’ there’s only six pages of content for that.

Abrams Appleseed have so far produced five other Block Books, also involving Peskimo, but definitely aimed at younger kids and covering subjects such as dinosaurs and the alphabet. This leads me to asking who the book is for? ‘Perfect for all ages!’ reads Abrams’ accompanying press release, but really this feels like a toddler book that adults can find amusing. While it’s entirely up to you if you want your child to learn who ‘Figrin Dan and the Modal Nodes’ are, it’s worth remembering that ‘The Force Awakens’, ‘Rogue One’ and ‘The Last Jedi’ all carried 12 certificates with them at the cinema and on home release. Undeniably, the content of the saga has skewed slightly older in the past few years.

Putting to one side the intended readership, this is a beautifully illustrated book and there will be much that a ‘Star Wars’ fan enjoy within it and gives them the perfect opportunity to brush up on their ‘Star Wars’ knowledge at the same time. For example’ I hadn’t recalled that the outpost Rey escapes from on Jakku was called Niima. Now I know, you’re never too old to keep learning.

John Rivers

April 2018

(pub: Abrams Appleseed. 104 page hardback board book. Price: £12.99 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-41972-831-0)

check out website: www.abramsbooks.com/imprints/abramsappleseed/