Read, You Must: Solo The Official Guide

With each new Star Wars movie, DK publishes a wonderful reference book full of photos of characters, weapons, ships, and environments. 

While the movie is still only available to see in a theatre, these books are the next best thing to being able to pause the movie and scrutinize the fascinating little details that go by too quickly. 

Lucasfilm's Pablo Hidalgo (The Last Jedi: The Visual Dictionary, Rogue One: The Ultimate Visual Guide) takes readers on a 128 page tour of the brand-new locations and locals from the movie while noting links to the Star Wars we already know and love.

For fans young and old, Solo: A Star Wars Story is a movie bursting with connections to other movies, TV shows, comics and books. As Han travels from planet to planet across the galaxy, his adventures link up to all sorts of trivia for fans. Some of the connections are to places and things in books published over 30 years ago, while others refer to details mentioned in The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels.

Like previous "Visual Guide" and "Visual Dictionary" books, Solo: The Official Guide is page after page of colourful photos from the movie along with descriptions and context for each droid, alien, and just about everything else.

At the back there is also a cool section of behind-the-scenes artwork, photos and info for fans interested in the movie-making process.

Solo: A Star Wars Story The Official Guide is a wonderful companion to the film. It does share an unfortunate trait though with similar Star Wars reference books from the past. As these books are released simultaneously with the film, but published and distributed beforehand, there are always major moments of the film that for secrecy's sake don't end up in the book. For Solo, these come in the form of character reveals that, once you've seen the film, pose a lot more questions than are answered on-screen.

For example, it would've been wonderful to have an image of the Cloud-Riders with their helmets off, as they eventually are seen in the movie, along with more detailed info about them.

There's another example late in the movie that certainly begs for elaboration but we'll leave that one for another time...

Like with previous guide books, it's a small price to pay to have such a photo-rich, detail-filled book to pour through between viewings of the movie, and gives readers new things to look for each time.

Highly recommended. 

(Publisher's Recommendation: Ages 10 & up)

Also available from DK:

DK Reader Level 2