Book Review: DK LEGO Play Book
DK publishing has been so kind as to send me a copy of the “LEGO® Play Book” for review. The book sports the subtitle “Ideas to bring your bricks to life”. It is a beautifully bound, 200 page hard cover edition, in line with other LEGO related DK books. However, I was more interested to see the little blurb in the bottom right corner of the cover: “More than 500 build and play ideas from LEGO® fans”. A book made by fans–but what fans?
The table of contents (which spans 4 pages) gives a very clear answer to that question. The book is split up into 5 themes sections and next to each section you will find a LEGO avatar of the fan/builder in charge of the section together with a short bio including such information as their age, job, LEGO specialty and favourite brick.
So who are these fans? The section “once upon a time”, is presented by Barney Main – if you don’t immediately recognise one or more of the names of the fans, I encourage you to do a quick google search for their names (e.g. Barney Main LEGO) and you will soon discover these are not “just” a couple of fans, but a select group of specialists in the different fields. The builds go from large (a castle) and detailed (a close-up of the construction of an arrow slit) to small and simply ingenious (a pair of “angled plates” on a neck bracket turn a minifig into a flying fairy). But what stands out especially in this section are the brick built creatures and characters in this section.
Next up Tim Goddard with “A small world” dedicated to microscale; a great introduction to building small, but with maximum effect. Then Pete Reid and Yvonne Doyle “Go wild!”, building animals of all sizes. Rod Gilles takes on “Things that go bump in the night” with spooky builds that also provide ideas for plenty of other uses. Tim Johnson closes off with “Wish you were here” (any section that uses the title of one of my all-time favourite Pink Floyd songs can only be great), building the holiday season. I was especially interested to see his Holiday Postcards which are a kind of 3D mosaics.
The book is full of interesting ideas. There are no very special building techniques, but then again that isn’t the aim of the book. It Is, however, a real eye-opener to the fact that you can go a very long way with a handful of relatively basic LEGO elements.
A recurring feature in the book is a section called “Handful of bricks” in which the builders suggest constructions related to their specific themes with a small predetermined set of bricks that is the same for all of them. The selection of bricks for this section is listed on the very last page of the book and is indeed a collection of common elements in small quantities that any fan is likely to have in their collection. While the builds are not especially brilliant, they do provide extra inspiration and a sense that anyone can build something cool without the need for either a large collection or specialised elements.
The book has already been adopted by my kids (meaning I effectively no longer own it) and ever since they got their hands on it there have been little LEGO sketches everywhere, trying to mimic many of the ideas provided in the book. The book is also visually attractive meaning it has been read and reread on multiple car trips and new and inspiring ideas are being discovered by the new owners on a regular basis.
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