By Daniel Lipkowitz
The story of the LEGO company itself, from a carpenter's workshop to Star Wars sets and the movies.
This is the odd one out, and worth knowing that before you buy: it isn't a build book at all. It's the history of LEGO the company, told with photographs, how a Danish carpenter started making wooden toys, how the plastic brick was invented, how the minifigure came to be, and then a march through the themes your child already loves, City, Ninjago, Star Wars, the movies and video games. This new edition was made for the 60th birthday of the brick and comes with a small printed brick of its own. For the child who's obsessed enough that they want to know where it all came from, this is the one that answers that.
Some children love the thing so much they want to know its whole story, and this feeds that particular hunger, the one no build book touches. It has more actual reading in it than anything else on this shelf, real paragraphs of history, so it's the pick for an older, stronger reader who's happy to read about LEGO rather than only build it. Because it's organized by theme and year, they can also just hunt for the sets they own and read those, which is how most children will use it first.