LEGO Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary

Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary #10

by Simon Beecroft

In true DK style, "LEGO(R) Star Wars(TM) The Visual Dictionary" elucidates, illuminates, and excites even the most discerning LEGO Group, Star Wars(TM), and minifigure fans around the world. Darth Vader, Boba Fett, Yoda, Luke Skywalker, and more are brought to life with dozens of little-known facts and hundreds of photos, as are accessories, vehicles, weapons, and even the Death Star Learn about the history, manufacture, and construction of the minifigures of the "Star Wars" galaxy, and come away a LEGO(R) Jedi Master.
LEGO, the LEGO logo, the Brick configuration and the Minifigure are trademarks of the LEGO Group. (c)2009 The LEGO Group. (c)2009 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All rights reserved. Production by Dorling Kindersley under license from the LEGO Group.

Genres: Star Wars, Nonfiction, Reference, Childrens, Picture Books, Pop Culture, Media Tie In

96 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2009

About the author

Simon Beecroft is the New York Times bestselling author of LEGO Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary as well as many other Star Wars titles for children, including Star Wars The Clone Wars: Watch Out For Jabba the Hutt, Star Wars: Luke Skywalker’s Amazing Story, and Star Wars: Beware the Dark Side. He has also written books on subjects as diverse as dinosaurs, extreme weather, future technology, Nelson Mandela, Power Rangers, and the Fantastic Four.

Reviews

[Monty Montgomery]

Phenomenal, no other word can describe this masterpiece, gripping storylines, tragic characters, an overarching narrative that would make Hemingway himself shit the bed, I dare say I should stop reading books now because I will never find one better than this

[Alexander]

Insightful read, really dug it back in the day. Building the world, one brick at a time. LEGO starwars τm

[Caitlin]

I got this at the scholastic book fair in 4th grade so yeah, i was pretty cool

[Leonardo]

This book will change your life.

[Philip]

Didn't realize that LEGO Star Wars just started 25 years ago with all "The Phantom Menace" models, but my then-10-year-old son really got into them big time, (he'd been doing "normal" sets for years by then), and so this brought back a lot of memories for both of us, (him building, me shelling out the big bucks).

This latest update edition came out in 2024, and so covers (chronologically) all nine "Skywalker Saga" films as well as "Rogue One" and a number of the Disney shows ("Mandalorian," "Endor," and probably some of the animated stuff neither of us watched).

This was a library book, so I didn't have any choice. But ironically, I would have preferred either the original 2009 or even 2014 edition, as my son's (and therefore my own) interest and knowledge of these sets ended long before either of those came out. And so this latest "update" not only focuses on a lot of models we've never heard of, but also shows and describes the more recently-released versions of many of the ships we actually do remember, while also listing the most recent vs. original release date — a seemingly minor point, but one which played havoc with us trying to remember when we actually bought and built any of these.

Still have most all these sets disassembled and sitting in the garage somewhere, waiting for my grandson to get a little older. Anyway, good fun and a lot of flashbacks.

(I haven't intentionally been on a Star Wars kick lately, but seems like I've read enough of these peripheral things — i.e., absolutely NO fiction; I'm not that big a nerd — lately that dammit, I guess I should create a separate bookshelf here for them...)

[Michael Dougherty]

Weeks of my life were spent staring at these sacred pages

[Emma]

This book is amazing. It gives an awesome description of each set and a list of every Lego Star Wars minifig at the time of writing. This book also includes a remake if the first Luke Skywalker minifig. It makes a great companion to the Lego Star Wars minifig guide.

[Furrydestroyer 420]

BRUH I was actually the cool kid in class when I was the first one to check it out from the library in 4th grade.

[Big Chungus]

Book goes harder than a Lego brick stuck on your foot on a Saturday morning after your kid left them out and you’re late to work and just spilled the coffee all over the floor

[Arbus]

O to tez dojebane bylo

[Daniel McMichael]

Every Lego Star Wars fan knows this is the OG. No one can argue it will always be the classic compared to its fun but still not as good sequel (2014 Lego Star Wars Visual Dictionary), and then its good but over-franchised sequel (Ultimate Lego Star Wars). The other ones were so mid I didn’t feel like they were worth buying 😂

[Parka]

(More pictures at parkablogs.com)

Here's a great book for all those LEGO Star Wars collectors out there. LEGO Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary also comes with an exclusive mini-figure of Luke Skywalker. It's quite thick but actually half the book behind the cover is a pad created to house that small figure. Not really a major issue.

There's a timeline that shows all the LEGO Star Wars sets, the boxes, from 1999 to 2009, which includes the movie saga, Clone Wars and specialist sets. It should delight the geek out of fans to see the LEGO incarnation of everything (I think). There are a lot of bricks, from characters like the small Yoda (whose captioned to have sensitive ears) to the mammoth 5195-piece Millennium Falcon with 5195 pieces. Awesome.

Every set is provided with their data file and captioned.

I've read from other reviews which say that not all the accessories are included, whatever that means. From what I see, there are plenty included, enough for you to shoot your own LEGO Star Wars movie anyway.

There's also a short interview with the designers of the series. You can read about how they create prototypes and bake the clay. It sounds really interesting to be working for LEGO. There are only between 4 to 7 designers and their desks are filled with countless LEGO bricks.

Some unofficial community constructions are also included, such as the life-size LEGO sculpture of Han Solo in carbonite or Mos Eisley diorama. Very nice. Talk about hard core fans!

This book is recommended to Star Wars fans, even if you don't collect LEGO sets.

[Sweet on Books]

* This is a terrifically comprehensive book on the subject of Star Wars lego.
* My six year old son is obsessed with this book, poring over the pages himself and asking for it to be read
to him constantly.
* It is a cool book with a ton of information on Star Wars and Star Wars Lego "guys", another obsession in my house.
____________________________________________________________________________________

This book is positively captivating my young Star Wars fan - he literally can't get enough of it. The title is very apt, LEGO Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary is just that, a visual catalog of Lego Star Wars sets with movie-accurate details filling up every page.

While this compendium is set up very logically for a Star Wars aficionado, I must confess it is all greek to me. My six year old suffers my ignorance as he tries, again and again, to explain it all to me. But I can tell you that the book is visually a feast, with photographs of the Star Wars Lego sets dating back to 1999; it is so tantalizing that said six year old begs for the $1000 Millennium Falcon Lego set that, at this point, can only be obtained on eBay. This is the perfect gift book for the Star wars fan and reluctant reader. As we say time and time again, text is text, no matter what the source. So, if you are pulling your hair out to get your young reader to pick up a book and Star Wars interests him, grab this book! Oh, and possibly most important, it comes with a Lego minifigure!

[Andrew]

The Visual Dictionary is quite the volume. It's a very comprehensive listing of all the LEGO Star Wars sets and minifigures from 1999 to 2009. Being that it's now 2013, it's obviously a little out of date, but keeping when it was released in mind it's really quite fantastic.

There's lots of beautiful full-color illustrations to show off the sets, especially how much better they got over a decade. Comparing the 1999 X-Wing set to the 2006 one is just night and day. There's lots of text callouts and blurbs about Star Wars and the sets as well. Some of them are silly and others seem downright inaccurate, so I'd be careful about believing everything you read.

My favorite parts were probably the designer interview and the community showcase. The former took a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to make the LEGO Star Wars sets and is very insightful. The latter looks at some of the awesome things fans have done with their own bricks to celebrate Star Wars. I wish there was more of both in there!

This book definitely seems targeted at kids, so if you have a little Star Wars LEGO fan in your home - pick this up for them; they'll love it! Even adult fans like myself will enjoy having it on their bookcase, though it's certainly not a must-buy.

[Andrew]

Ok who does not have fond memories of Lego (ok apart from that time you stood on some, boy is that painful)
Anyway my love of Lego is no secret and goes back to being a very young boy (yes Lego is that old - look it up), and my grandmother buying me kits for when I was on holiday. Then as I grew up out came the star wars films and I remember many an hour trying to recreate the ships from the films in those coloured building blocks.
Then years late a deal was struck and out came the first of many, many licensed kits from the film. Now I would love to be able to admit I have the kits but really you need to have a small fortune to be able to do that these days (plus I need to wall space for book cases)
But my love of Lego and especially Star Wars Lego lives on and this book is a positive treasure trove of kits and information, it is fascinating and I dont care what target age group it is I love it. Problem now is I want to go build something!

[Luis Del Aguila]

Como el nombre o indica, esta es un diccionario visual de los productos Lego Star Wars. Es bastante completa, y con una guia tecnica de cada producto, con datos de la fecha de lanzamiento y caracteristicas como el numero de piezas, al final mustran detalles de como esla produccion de las piezas , desde el concepto inicial, investigacion y diseño final. es un tipo de libro catalogo interesante que todo coleccionista de Lego deberia tener.

no trae ningun dato aparte o informacion nueva sobre algun personaje, esa seria la parte decepcionante, por lo demas es bastante aceptable.

[Mellissa]

Reading a condensed version of this to Josiah. DROID SOCKET.

[Cale]

'So it's a catalog, see, but we don't list the prices, and we do list things people can't buy, just so they know what they missed. Oh, and then include an exclusive figure so the collectors feel compelled to buy it. ' - My impressions of the mindset behind building this book.
Actually, it's not so bad. This collection of Lego Star Wars sets has impressive artwork of most of the sets that were released in the Lego Star Wars brand between 1999 and 2009. And the information provided is a weird cross between super-detailed Star Wars marginalia (Do you know what kind of anti-infantry battery was used by Echo Base on Hoth? Per this book, it was a DF9), and super-detailed Lego details (like a description of the variations between the 4 different Hoth soldiers that have been released, including skin tone and shape of goggles). If you're a Star Wars Lego fanatic, you'll be blown away by the detail. For the rest of us, it's just a nice coffee table book full of pictures of Lego designs with too much information.

[Jordan]

This book was a huge blast from the past. I remember constantly checking it out in elementary school, staring in awe at all the sets. It’s crazy looking back now—this book is over a decade old—but it was fun to realize I actually owned several of the sets from the 2008-2009 era when I was little.

My favorite sections were Chapter 3 and Chapter 4. I loved seeing the special sets that were separate from the main line, like the Mini, Technic, and Collector Series. Chapter 4, which covers the "process behind the madness," gave me a real appreciation for the work LEGO puts into their design.

The highlight, however, was the timeline. It really puts into perspective how much they produced in such a short period. I can’t imagine what a modern timeline would look like—probably over 500 sets by now!

4.25/5 Stars. I do wish it expanded more on the specific functions of the sets, but since it is aimed at kids, I understand the limitations. I would love to read a larger, more general LEGO visual dictionary in the future.

[Chad]

Fun to flip through. Nice photos and info about hundreds of sets based on Star Wars movies, shows, books, and video games. Some facts are from within the Star Wars universe, others are about the LEGO items. It covers sets released 1999-2014, from the Original Trilogy, Prequel Trilogy, Clone Wars series, comics, video games, and TV specials (including LEGO media). I like that it shows the various iterations of the same sets over the years.

The last several pages tell how LEGO Star Wars sets are designed, show AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO) MOCs (My Own Creations), and show a gallery of LEGO Star Wars minifigs over the years. I knew minifigs had gotten more detailed over the years, but I was surprised to see by how much.

Notes
The 1999 Jar Jar Binks minifig was the 1st to have a unique headsculpt.

[Ryan Tse]

This book is about Star Wars But in lego.Lego has a lot of Lego sets that is Star Wars But remade in Lego.This book introduces the history,different sets,mini figures of the Lego Star Wars universe.
This book is very interesting as I like both Lego and Star Wars.I also own a few sets of Lego Star Wars Lego sets.So this book is very interesting.I will recommend this book to other people that likes Lego.

[asiya | アセヤ (free palestine)]

So, this book was Cleary written by men.

Other than that, it was fantastic!

The only reason why this is shelved as "special...", is because it contained an extra Lego character of Luke Skywalker, so I thought that was pretty fun.

The descriptions and elongated passages written about the extensive history of Lego Star Wars, really spruced things up!

It reminded me of my favorite episode: Revenge Of The Sith.

[Chad]

I'm a fan of LEGO and Star Wars, so I enjoyed this. It covers sets released 1999-2010, from the Original Trilogy, Prequel Trilogy, and Clone Wars series. Some facts are from within the Star Wars universe, others are about the LEGO items. There are great close-up photos. The last few pages tell how LEGO Star Wars sets are designed, and show AFOL (adult fan of LEGO) creations.

[Nicholas Carabillò]

this book is for people who love lego star wars sets and for kid to learn about how were sets like in the past. what's also great about this book is that it comes with a limited edition luke skywalker minifigure.

[Nikki]

not an ideal readaloud but fun to skim

[Graham Maclean]

Absolutely no plot

[d followedby c]

I love Lego, really I buy these particular versions for the Limited Edition Lego Mini's - the books are good for a quick flick through.

[Hugo B]

I like this book because I like Lego. Kids who like Lego and Star Wars will like this book.

[Logan DeShazer]

It is coool

[Oscar]

This book is pretty lit.
I love the format of the book