Read, You Must: The Star Wars Book

DK Publishing has for been creating amazing guidebooks for Star Wars fans for nearly 25 years. From Star Wars Encyclopedia, to Star Wars Year By Year, each sounds like it’s the final, definitive book, THE book for Star Wars lovers.

In 2015 alone they published Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know AND Ultimate Star Wars!

All the above titles are wonderful, must-have books but Star Wars is an ever-expanding galaxy of stories and characters, planets and aliens, spaceships and droids, and a LOT of Star Wars has happened since 2015!

Which leads us to the brand new guide book, simply titled The Star Wars Book. The subtitle “Expand Your Knowledge of a Galaxy Far, Far Away” holds true as even the most dedicated fans will probably find some new information in here.

As the Skywalker Saga has ended and The Mandalorian is the main new Star Wars story coming out right now, and before the launch of the High Republic era, this is a great time to capture the story so far, in so many facets.

The Star Wars Book looks at all aspects of the saga as they relate to the bigger story. Where the Visual Dictionary books simply look at one film at a time, The Star Wars Book draws connections between books, comics, tv and video games and how each aspect relates to the bigger picture. A topic like the Force might refer to moments from the movies, episodes of The Clone Wars and Rebels, novels and more.

Authors Pablo Hidalgo (Rogue One: The Ultimate Visual Guide, The Rise of Skywalker Visual Dictionary, and many more), Cole Horton (Absolutely Everything You Need to Know) and Dan Zehr compile each subject into easy to read but insightful segments.

Zehr (aka Dan Z) is a first-time Star Wars author here, but longtime host and co-creator of the popular Star Wars fan podcast Coffee With Kenobi, a teacher and a very positive face in the fan community. Its great to see him contributing officially!

The are many wonderful Star Wars books, but only one that bears this title. Do yourself a favour and get the book, The Star Wars Book!

Read, You Must: DK Star Wars visual guides

One of the great traditions with Lucasfilm's publishing world is that each movie release seems to have its own lavish book of visuals to pour over from DK books. The format changes from time-to-time but each of these books is reliably full of full-colour, highly-detailed photos of characters, costumes, props, and spaceships from the film. The text highlights details you may have missed or expand on the story with info that didn't make it on screen.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker The Visual Dictionary does not disappoint in any of these areas. In fact it expands upon the format by also including five cross-section artworks that previously would be in their own book.

At 200 pages this one is more than double the thickness of the previous guides for The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. That's almost enough to satisfy even the most detail-hungry fans.

Of course, we have to say "almost" because my only complaint of these books is the same one each time: they always have to omit major moments, character reveals, or other "spoilers" for fear that someone leaks such info from the book before the movie comes out. Seems silly now, but this book does not contain Emperor Palpatine, a major character in The Rise of Skywalker.

That's an understandable necessity in the modern world, and a small complaint. What is here is page after page of photos of characters, droids, creatures, aliens, blasters, lightsabers, helmets and nearly everything else you'd want a closer look at.

Of course it is a visual dictionary, but with text by Lucasfilm's own Pablo Hidalgo there's plenty of meaty stuff to read here too. There are many hints and allusions to possible scenes or even storylines deleted from the movie.

For any fan of the design and detail that goes into the making of the Star Wars universe, these visual dictionaries are a must-have addition to the collection.

For younger fans there is also Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker The Galactic Guide, a similarly packaged book of photos and info about the film, just on a smaller scale.

At 95 pages, this smaller hardcover still delivers with plenty to enjoy, profiling key characters and highlighting interesting facts and tidbits. Many of the same pictures are in both books but in this one you sometimes get a closer look at things, like mysterious character Zori Bliss' helmet.

Both books are up to the usual excellent DK standards for Star Wars fans and augment the movie experience like only the visual guides can. Enjoy!

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