One of the fun things to do as a geek parent is share your love of various fandoms with your children. I am definitely guilty of this. I really adore sharing geeky stuff with my daughter. Now that Disney has bought the Star Wars franchise and with the release of The Force Awakens, there are tons of new novelty items out for fans to purchase. My daughter received a boxed set of Star Wars Little Golden books that follow the first six movies. If you don’t know, Little Golden books are children’s books with a gold-colored binding. Many of you may have read them as kids or are currently reading them to your kids. After reading through The Phantom Menace with my daughter, we moved on to Attack of the Clones. It was just as cute and entertaining, and my daughter particularly loved this one for whatever reason.
Meanwhile, Obi-Wan goes to Kamino to discover that the Republic has a new army of clones. I’m assuming that if you are interested in this book, you probably already know the rest, so I’ll spare you the details.
Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (Little Golden Book edition) was written by Christopher Nicholas and illustrated by Ethen Beavers. It was published in 2015 by Golden Books. This particular book was actually a packaged deal with five other Star Wars episodes as children’s books, but for the purpose of this review, I will only be discussing Attack of the Clones.
The book highlights the main points of the movie. Padme is in danger from assassins, so Anakin is recruited to watch her and keep her safe. Romance ensues. Though Attack of the Clones was slightly better in plot than The Phantom Menace, there were still big long sections of dull stuff that could have just been cut out. As a children’s book, though, the story gets right to the point, glimpsing past some of the cringe-worthy romance between Padame and Anakin as well as some of the boring politics. In some ways, it was more fun to read this story as a children’s story than as an actual movie.
The book is aimed at older children as it has no rhyming and does not focus on teaching. It’s more story-oriented than anything else. The book only comes with regular pages and a hard cover, so parents with very young children might want to wait. I know my little one could only do board books very awhile because she would tear at the pages.
The illustrations were great and very child-friendly. They gelled together well with the style of writing and were very appropriate for a younger audience. There are illustrations on every page with text, and the pictures really did do a great job of furthering the narration when needed.
Overall, I would rate the book highly since it did a great job as a novelty children’s book: tells a fun tale that is full of action and adventure. Attack of the Clones is not one of my favorite Star Wars movies, but it does a great job as being a children’s book. I would recommend this book for any geek parent who would like to share Star Wars with their kids.