The LEGO Ideas Book

As a child of the 80′s, I remember fondly the old LEGO Idea books. In those books, there were lots of photos of LEGO creations, and instructions that showed how to build some of the models in the book. I remember the Lego Idea Book 6000 the best, that’s the one that follows Bill and Mary as they build a house, explore a city, travel to space, and then back in time to a medieval castle. When I saw the title of this book, the obvious connection was to those old books, so how does it compare?

The one thing that’s missing is the instructions – this is not an instruction manual. Also, unlike Sean Kenney’s smaller books (Cool City, Cool Cars and Trucks, and Cool Robots), this is a big book – nearly 200 pages! Like Sean’s books, this book is filled with photos of LEGO creations. Like Sean’s books, the intent of the book is to give you ideas on how to build things. You’ll find that a lot of ideas can be crammed into 200 pages.

The book is broken up into sections, essentially these are: vehicles, buildings, spaceships & robots, castles, pirates & adventure, and real world creations. This last section is very interesting, showing you things such as picture frames and pencil holders made out of LEGO. As you can see, like the old LEGO Idea book, this book hits on many of LEGO’s core themes.

Each of the sections starts out with a two page spread of useful parts that can be used to build creations in that section. I found that even these pages gave me ideas and started me thinking on how a particular part could be used. After that you’ll find a number of creations beautifully photographed, often with multiple views which come in handy if you are attempting to reverse engineer one of the creations so that you can build it yourself. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked at a LEGO truck and wished I could see how the frame was built. The multiple angle photos in this book help so that you won’t experience that problem. At the end of each section, you’ll find a few pages where you “Meet the Builder.” These include some interview style questions where you learn about the builder who wrote a particular section of the book. I was surprised to find that one of the builders is only 18!

I think LEGO fans of all ages will enjoy the book, but young children might have a hard time handling the book due to its size. The lack of instructions also mean that it is probably more suited to an experienced LEGO builder – either an older child or a parent who enjoys building with younger children. My six year old son enjoys paging through the book, but it’s a bit much for my 3 year old to handle. Neither would be able to build anything in this book without my help.

Overall, I think this is another great book option to inspire LEGO builders – but remember this book is about ideas and imagination – and you can’t write instructions for that. If you know what you are buying, I think you’ll really like this book, but don’t expect it to be what it is not. If you want instructions, try one of the Brickmaster books such as LEGO City Brickmaster.

We bought this book for our 8 year old son’s birthday and he loves it. In contrast to other reviewer’s negative comments that the book lacks detailed instruction, this is the feature our son likes best. In his words, “you can use your brain and think about it.”

This book contains great full-page spreads on Lego projects that anyone could adapt. The book is separated into thematic chapters including:

Automobiles
Houses and Landscaping
Future/Space
History
Adventure
Lego-built Real Objects

Potential buyers should be aware of a few issues.

-This book does not contain step-by-step instructions. It provides pictures for inspiration as well as some building tips, but it is not a detailed how-to guide.
-Although another reviewer complained that the book requires too many specialized pieces, I did not find this to be a problem. Many of the builds include variations, and the whole purpose of the book is to help builders adapt concepts to their own builds instead of creating exact copies of the images in the book. In fact, the book has pages with “useful pieces for this type of theme” but these are hardly restrictive.

My wife especially likes the “Meet the Builder” features in each chapter that include a short bio about those who contributed to the book.

I would eagerly buy a sequel to this book that focused on other Lego themes. The images are fantastic, the ideas are clever, and I think I, as a novice MOCer, can learn a lot from this book and share it with my son once he graduates from DUPLO to LEGO. At $15, this hardcover book is a steal.

As a person that has always loved LEGO products this book was amazing. I loved the full color images and all of the ideas that are contained within the book itself. I was amazed to find that the ideas were so straight forward and how creative the ideas were. You get ideas that span the gamut from easy to develop to ones that will take more time. What was great about the book is that it makes you think outside of the box and helps you to realize that there are so many different things that you can do with your LEGOs that you may not have been doing in the past. So no longer do you need to worry about the original instructions on the box, this book helps you to explore and create new things with the existing LEGOs that you have already.

One thing that the book does not have is step-by-step instructions, so you do have to read through and look closely at the pictures if you wish to completely recreate the images that you see.

All-in-all this was a great book full of images that just pop off the page! If you love LEGO, you will love this book!

I got this book for my six year old grandson, who dearly loves Legos. At first he was looking for specific instructions like the Lego kits have. When I explained that this was just to give him ideas about how to build things on his own, using his own imagination, he really liked it. This book really does stimulate the child’s imagination, helping them to build on the ideas presented in the book.

Lego may be a branded, large corporate, heavily marketed toy constructed from artificial materials. It is also a global fixture in children’s imaginations. In short, it is cool to build stuff with Lego bricks.

At first, the lack of a how-to for each model seems to be a problem. However, the greatest asset of the book is exactly this. Rather than tell a child how to do it, it offers the opportunity to figure it out. Older children will be closer to the mark, and younger children will be able to muddle through things with their parents.

To best appreciate the book, unfortunately, access to a lot of Lego parts, including some less standard pieces. If you, like myself, live near a Lego store, then you are good to go. If you live away from one, expect to order online.

This is at least a fun coffee table book, but, as an inspiration to children to think creatively, it more than meets the mark.

I fully recommend “The LEGO Ideas Book.”

Anthony Trendl
anthonytrendl.com

While I truly enjoy this book I feel that the title caption of The LEGO Ideas Book should be Unlock your Imagination (and your Wallet). The book provides tremendous inspiration for LEGO creations and is simply a joy to just flip through and explore what others have managed to achieved with beloved LEGO bricks. However, what it also may inspire is the need to accumulate more LEGO pieces.

This book is not an instruction manual. While it provides pictures and is pretty lengthy at 200 pages, the book does not give step by step detail of the models. The models are intended for inspiration. Tips are provided but I feel that the books is intended to give LEGO fans with a penchant for using their own imagination rather than instruction guides as a start-off point. You will get tons of ideas as each page is filled with ideas but you will largely have to use your own creativity to fill in the blanks.

The scale and types of creations and inspirations are very diverse. There are minifigure scale bridges and houses, microscale creations, mosiacs, space, castle, city, board games, etc. There is something for everyone.

If you or your child own a basic bucket of LEGO and want more ideas of what to do with that bucket of bricks, this book is probably not for you. As mentioned in other reviews, a lot of the inspirational creations use unique and hard-to-acquire pieces that usually aren’t present in a basic bucket. Even with more of the simplistic creations, there are a fair amount of wedges/slopes that usually aren’t provided in a substantial quantity in starter LEGO buckets. I’ve been collecting LEGO on and off since I was a child. I am now an adult and can’t shake off the LEGO monkey off my back. That being said, I have a pretty extensive and diverse collection of LEGO pieces that may be suitable to the ideas provided in this book. Even then, if I wanted to replicate some of the creations exactly, I probably wouldn’t have the pieces in the right color. This is something I don’t mind, but it gives you an idea of how detailed and customized some of these creations are.

This book is a great find if you take it as it is. Most people will probably not be able to recreate a lot of these models simply because some of them are highly detailed and require a fair amount of brick but it does provide you with inspirations of what can be done. In fact, some of the models will require a fair amount of investment into bricks from Pick a Brick or brick inventory sellers. The book wasn’t intended for readers to duplicate models but to use the models for ideas, tips and inspiration. In that area, this book excels very well as the author compiled vast and diverse ideas for many, many creations.

Highly recommended!