By Megan H. Rothrock
A tour of the wildest builds from the grown-up LEGO fan world, for the child who has outgrown the beginner idea books.
This is the one for the serious builder, the child who's already flipped through the DK idea books and wants to see what LEGO can really do. The author, a former LEGO set designer, sends her own minifigure through a comic-strip story, visiting some of the best adult LEGO builders in the world and showing off their models: hot rods, spaceships, a medieval village, mecha robots, a steampunk machine. Twenty-five of the builds come with real step-by-step breakdowns you can follow; nearly two hundred more are there to stare at and steal ideas from. It's ambitious, it's from the fan community rather than the LEGO company, and it treats your child like a builder who's ready for the deep end.
A child deep into LEGO eventually finds the beginner books too easy, and this is where they go next. The models are harder and cooler, the twenty-five step-by-steps give them a real project to sink into, and the comic-strip frame carries them from build to build so it never reads like a manual. It also widens their world: it shows there are grown adults who build like this, which is a thrilling thing for an obsessed builder to learn. The publisher pitches it at ten and up, so it's the most demanding book on this shelf.