Read, You Must: Star Wars Thumb Doodles: The Epic Saga at Your Fingertips

Star Wars Thumb Doodles is not a book to read exactly but an activity book to DO. From Klutz comes this fun and silly art book for young artists of nearly any skill level.

The concept is simple: you make thumbprints or fingerprints using the included (ink-luded?) ink pads, then use the supplied marker and the very cool double-sided lightsaber pencil crayon to add details. With a little practice your prints can become Star Wars characters and vehicles. Various movie scenes are recreated in black & white as simple but effective backgrounds.

The colours included seem limited at first but you can go pretty far with this small palette. The drawing style of the sample illustrations is simple enough that the children who tried it with me had no problems creating characters. We had fun making cartoon-y versions of Ewoks, Yoda, Darth Vader, Jabba & AT-AT walkers.

The characters and scenes in the book highly favour Episodes 4-6 with only brief appearances by some from the Episodes 1-3. The kids using it with me wanted to know where Anakin and Padmé were. Good question.

Some of the pictures are quite funny like "Really Young Yoda". Some characters work much better than others in this form. Ewoks look great for example, but others like C-3PO & Chewbacca look unrecognizable unless you can add a lot with the marker.

One thing not really stressed in the instructions is that you need to wait for the ink to dry before adding detail, or turning the page. Some kids were more patient than others! Any complaints are minimal as we had fun with this book, several kids wanted to know where I got it (most book stores carry Klutz/Scholastic titles) and I was happy the ink washed off my fingers with ease!

(Only slightly) Stained thumbs up!

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