By Sarah Dees
Numbered, photo-by-photo LEGO builds you can make from the mixed pile of bricks already in the bin, no new set required.
The title is the whole pitch, and it's the right one: no special set to go buy. The book lays out real numbered steps, with a photo for each one, for building cars, a pirate ship, robots, animals, and a working marble run out of the ordinary jumble of bricks most homes already have. It's more of a straight how-to than the DK LEGO books, less browse-and-admire and more here's exactly how you make it. Sarah Dees developed the projects on her family building blog, so they'd been built by children before they landed in the book.
A lot of building books show a great finished model and then leave a child staring at it with no idea where to begin. This one gives the steps. Each build is broken down so a child can follow it alone, and the payoff comes fast because the thing actually gets finished. It may suit a child who'd rather work a plan to a known result than invent one from scratch. Nothing here needs a set you don't already own, so there's no wait between the idea and the building.