MORE Indoor Activities, the Star Wars Way!

See below for details!

Whether it's an Imperial takeover, First Order occupation, a Blue Shadow virus going around, or just a Kamino-style rainy day, staying indoors will not stop young Star Wars fans from loving their favourite galaxy far, far away! 

Here's another list of activity books to keep young padawans engaged and inspired while indoors! See the previous batch of books here. Some of these books may be out of print or tricky to find new, but online sources should be able to help.

For Young Students:

Star Wars Workbooks (Workman Publishing) is a line of educational workbooks to help teach younglings. There are titles for each age/grade level (Preschool, Kindergarten, 1st Grade, 2nd Grade etc.) focusing on topics of reading, writing and mathematics.


Star Wars Phonics (Scholastic) "Learn how to read with all your favorite Star Wars characters! Perfect for reluctant readers, each book is illustrated with fullcolor images from the blockbuster Star Wars movies."

For Young Coders & Engineers:

Star Wars Coding Projects (DK) "A Step-by-Step Visual Guide to Coding Your Own Animations, Games, Simulations and more! Star Wars Coding Projects is a step-by-step visual guide to designing and coding in Scratch. The setting is as big as your imagination." (pictured above)

For Young Creative Writers: 

Star Wars Mad-Libs: The books that are word games. Loads of fun playing around and twisting up the familiar Star Wars story with your own creativity and sense of humour!

For Young Artists:

Learn to Draw Star Wars: Volume 2 (Walter Foster Jr. Creative Team) "With just a little practice, you’ll be drawing Rey, BB-8, Kylo Ren, and more. This 64-page, spiral-bound manual comes with grid-drawing exercises, tracing paper, and basic shapes projects."

LEGO Star Wars Doodle Activity Book "A brand new format for LEGO Star Wars, part activity book, part coloring/doodle book"

For Young Builders:

LEGO Star Wars Ideas Book (DK) "More than 200 Games, Activities, and Building Ideas. Features imaginative play and building ideas using your own LEGO brick collection. There are LEGO projects that take just a few minutes, it builds to keep you occupied for hours." 

Do you have a favourite Star Wars activity book? Let us know in the comments. Don't forget to check out part one of this list too!

Indoor Activities, the Star Wars Way!

Whether it's an Imperial takeover, First Order occupation, a Blue Shadow virus going around, or just a Kamino-style rainy day, staying indoors will not stop young Star Wars fans from loving their favourite galaxy far, far away!  

Yes of course you could read Star Wars books, play with Star Wars toys and games, dress up in costumes (be careful with those indoor lightsaber battles!) but there are also plenty of Star Wars activity books out there to help kids get creative and enjoy their indoor time!

For Young Artists:

Star Wars Doodles (Disney)  By artist Zack Giallongo!
"Younglings can draw, color, and create with all their favorite characters from the Star Wars films."

 
Star Wars Thumb Doodles (Klutz Press) "With ink art and a few quick lines, you can recreate favorite moments from the movies or from scenes never seen before...Even in a galaxy far, far away."

Draw Star Wars Rebels (Klutz Press) "A complete how-to guide packed with expert tips and easy step-by-step instructions that let kids bring these exciting new Star Wars characters to life."
 
ART2-D2's Guide to Folding and Doodling (An Origami Yoda Activity Book) (Abrams)
One of our favourite authors Tom Angleberger—with the help of the kids from McQuarrie Middle School—presents young Padawans with 75+ activities from the Star Wars universe. This is a tie-in book to the popular Origami Yoda book series.

For Young Scientists & Engineers:

Star Wars Maker Lab (DK) "With 20 amazing projects, Star Wars Maker Lab teaches your budding Padawan how to become a Master of science, in both the real world and the Star Wars galaxy."

Star Wars Science Fair Book (Scholastic) "Gear up for Science Fair season with exciting Star Wars-themed science experiments!"

Star Wars Folded Flyers (Klutz Press) "For the first time ever, you can fold Star Wars flyers that fly with the force. Star Wars Folded Flyers will speed through the living room as well as they do in outer space."

For Young Crafters & Cooks:

Star Wars Mania "Part craft book, part activity book, with over 40 projects to make in each book, the Mania series offers hours of creative fun for boys and girls of all ages!"



The Star Wars Craft Book (Del Rey) "Fans of all ages and skill levels can bring the best of the galaxy far, far away right into their own homes." 

Star Wars Make & Do (Egmont Books Ltd UK) "Plenty for young Star Wars fans to do: things to make, including a Chewbacca hand puppet, a stormtrooper helmet, and the Yoda decoder."
 
The Star Wars Cook Book: BB-ATE (Chronicle) There have been several books in the series. This one is the most recent and focuses on breakfast and brunch items. And as always, a lot of food puns. 
 
Do you have a favourite Star Wars activity book? Let us know in the comments. There's probably enough we missed to make a part 2 to this. Maybe 3!

Read, You Must: Star Wars The Complete Visual Dictionary New Edition

Longtime readers of this site know how much we love the visual guides published by DK that accompany each Star Wars movie. For example here are our reviews of the Rogue One, The Last Jedi and Solo visual guide books.


These books are always packed with incredible photos of aliens, creatures, droids, weapons, costumes and props from the films, as well as hours of detailed information to devour.


Star Wars The Complete Visual Dictionary - New Edition is a hefty title for a hefty book! It is a combination of the most of the contents of the guide books for Episodes 1-8, includes material from Rogue One and a small amount from Solo. For a relatively new fan of the saga ready to dive into the minute details of the films, this 350+ page compendium is an amazing collection of information and images, and is absolutely required reading!

Instead of a simple reprint of each book with text updates, this book combines the images from different movies where appropriate. For example, the Rebel Alliance pilots of Rogue One and A New Hope are combined as one cohesive group. As well, since The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi occur so close to each other, there's no need for two separate entries for characters like Captian Phasma, BB-8 and General Hux.
 

Fans of The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels may be disappointed that very little material from those series has made it in here, unlike the recent DK book Encyclopedia of Starfighters and Other Vehicles, which showcased images from across the films and TV shows. The only images connected to Rebels, for example, are those of Chopper as the cantankerous droid appears in Rogue One, albeit very briefly.


If you haven't already acquired the visual guides for the individual movies, then this book is absolutely a must-have!


If you already have the individual guides, the price tag may put this one in the "wish list" category. 
 
Either way, once this book is in your hands you will certainly spend many hours going through it!

Canadians in Star Wars!

Star Wars began as an American movie, filmed mostly in the UK, with mostly American & British cast, crew and everything else. 

Mostly, but not all. A few of us Canadians sneak in there now and then too!

If you follow our Twitter @SWKidscast or facebook @StarWarsKidscast accounts (please do if you don't already!) you may already know this. Over the past week or so we've been celebrating one Canadian contribution to Star Wars each day as we count down to Canada Day (July 1).

There are far more notable Canadian contributors than we realized and should've started this much earlier! However, there's always next year. And please let us know if we missed somebody! And use the hashtag #StarWarsEh

Here's a recap of week one of our celebration...
 

Anakin/Vader actor Hayden Christensen!

E.K. Johnston, author of Ahsoka!

Biggs Darklighter was Canadian!

Catherine Winder was vital in shaping The Clone Wars

Gone too early, but not forgotten. Artist Gene Day.

This includes a LOT of hardworking, talented people!

Lucasfilm's (and Winnipeg's) Pablo Hidalgo

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

Read, You Must: Encyclopedia of Starfighters and Other Vehicles

I must admit that the spaceships are not my favourite part of Star Wars. While I completely appreciate them on screen, and especially in toy form, I've never gotten particularly excited about the vehicles.

For me Star Wars is so much about the characters - and especially the aliens! For a 208-page book specifically about vehicles to keep me engaged like Encyclopedia of Starfighters and Other Vehicles has, that's really impressive! Certainly I can see readers referring back to this one many times.

Written by Landry Q. Walker (author of the very entertaining Star Wars Aliens Volume 1 and writer for the Star Wars Adventures comics), this book is similar to DK's Encyclopedia of Characters in many ways.

Encyclopedia of Starfighters gives one full-colour, individual fact-sheet for about 200 Star Wars vehicles. Whether they are pivotal to the Star Wars Saga like Millennium Falcon or the Death Star, or very obscure “blink-and-you-miss-it” background ships, everything is equal here. Each page has several images and details about the ship plus how they fit into the story.

The title is a little misleading as there seem to be just as many cargo ships, transporters, walkers, tanks, boats, frigates, cruisers, speeders, skiffs and just about everything else as there are starfighters. Starfighters is probably a more exciting word than "transports" though.

The book contains vehicles from Episodes 1 - 8, plus Rogue One, The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels, all side-by-side. It's a great recent trend when books like this treat the saga as a whole, and weighing the animated shows equally with the movies.


Encyclopedia of Starfighters is divided into sections on Air, Land, Water, and of course Space vehicles, which is the largest section by far. Some of the ships are very well known while others may have only been in one episode of a TV show. Usually from the pictures it's clear what movie an image is from but I would've appreciated something like "First seen in The Clone Wars Season 2 Episode..." on a few of them.

Among all the images and information, author Landry Walker has fun with some of the section headings with puns like "Maul Aboard", "Soulless Asylum" (ask your parents) and "End over Endor", or cheeky references to movies like "Ion Giant, "Fast and Furious", the 1902 silent film "Trip to the Moon" and at least one reference to Top Gun. Fans of Star Wars Rebels will appreciate why the threatening Clone Wars-era AT-TE walker is referred to as a "Retirement Home".

Thall Joben from 1985's Droids cartoon

One enjoyable nugget that jumped out for this 80's kid was the expansion of the story of Kanan Jarrus' Joben T-85 Speeder. In Adam Bray's 2014 Star Wars Rebels The Visual Guide, the name Joben seemed to be a reference to the racing character Thall Joben from the 1985 Star Wars cartoon series Droids. Here that is confirmed and elaborated on that the bike is indeed "named for famous swoop racer Thall Joben". 

There's probably more fun for keen-eyed fans to discover too!
 

There is one design oddity that jumped out: on the page for the infamous Slave-1, the ship is rightly attributed to Jango Fett, then to Boba Fett but here Boba is only briefly mentioned and neither Fett is pictured. Instead, the pirate Hondo Ohnaka is pictured with a reference to one time he "borrowed" the ship. A picture of Jango and young Boba sitting together in the cockpit would've made much more sense here. Hondo fans will be happy though!

The Star Wars Encyclopedia of Starfighters is highly recommended for fans wanting a quick overview of many vehicles in an easily accessible format. If you’re looking for further details, you’ll also want to dive into books like the Incredible Cross-Sections series (also from DK).

(Publisher's Recommendation: Ages 8 - 12 years)

October is "Star Wars Reads" Month!

In the past we've enjoyed spreading the word about Star Wars Reads Day, an annual event that has been happening the past few years in October that celebrates Star Wars and reading. What's not to love about that?

This year the day has grown into a MONTH! So for all of October fans around the Galaxy will be celebrating in different ways.

Star Wars Kidscast will be enjoying Star Wars Reads by spotlighting recommended Star Wars books, sharing photos and spreading the word about events on our facebook (@StarWarsKidscast) and Twitter (@SWKidscast). 

What are your favourite Star Wars books? Does your school or library have an event? Do you dress up? Feel free to share your experience! We'd love to hear about it.

Here's the link to this year's Star Wars Reads downloadable pdf activity kit!

Don't forget to use the tag #StarWarsReads in your social media messages!

For more info visit StarWars.com

Happy reading and may the Force be with you!