Galactic Storybook by Calliope Glass

Galactic Storybook by Calliope Glass

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While this book's illustrations were incomparably adorable with cuteness overload that induced myriad smiles and d'awww's from me, I was a bit disappointed in the format and content. Let me explain. First off this is obviously a children's book meant for bedtime storytelling. In that it is perfection. But it skips over so many important story points for the sake of some other lesser story points that I was left flummoxed and confused. The back of the book describes it thus, "This collection of six Star Wars tales from across the Skywalker Saga turns story time into a galactic adventure for little ones!" It does that with aplomb but leaves out some of the BEST parts in my personal opinion.

The "chapters" we get are:

-A Jedi Tale (the prequels)

-A New Adventures (A New Hope)

-The Battle Continues (Empire Strikes Back)

-Against All Odds (Return of the Jedi)

-New Heroes for the Galaxy (The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi)

-The Final Fight (Rise of Skywalker)

So y'all know that I am a HUGE prequel fan and relegating all three of these fabulously wonderful stories to just one chapter while each of the original trilogy movies gets an entire chapter of their own does not sit well with me one bit. For example, my second favorite Star Wars movie, Attack of the Clones, ONLY included Petranaki Arena and the Acklay/Nexu/Reek battle. There was ZERO mention of clones at all...wait, huh?!? The movie literally has the word "Clones" in the title and they weren't even mentioned AT ALL! Very frustrated with this omission. There is one picture of two clones flanking Sidious but that just doesn't seem like enough. Mapping it out, TPM gets 6 pages, AOTC gets 1 page, and ROTS gets 5 pages.

As for the original trilogy, they each get their own individual chapter as I mentioned above. ANH gets 12 pages but oddly leaves out the destruction of Alderaan all together instead just simply saying, "They zoomed off in the Falcon to find the rebels but found something else floating in space instead. Luke thought it was a small moon." *sigh* ESB gets 10 pages with 3 of them focusing on the battle between Luke and Vader and the aftermath...of course without making any hint at the fact Luke loses his hand in the process. And finally, ROTJ gets 10 pages. 

Lastly we have the sequel trilogy with TFA getting 7 pages, TLJ getting 7 pages, and TROS getting 10 pages--at least this is a more even lay out than the prequels but on the other hand, its still 12 pages more than the prequels got...just, WHY?? I mean, come on guys, the prequels are the entire foundation of Anakin's story!! Sure they came out release-wise irl in the middle, but story-telling wise, they are essential to understanding the rest of the story. Ridiculous I say, ridiculous!

Regardless, as I so glowingly mentioned above, the illustrations by Katie Cook are simply phenomenal and super engaging, especially for a young child which is obviously the audience of this book. So I'm happy to own it for that fact alone. The few glimpses we got of cute chibi Jedi Masters, arena beasts, Darth Maul, evil Chancellor Palpatine, etc. were all so wonderful that I just wanted more. Oh well, it is what it is and I guess I should be thankful they at least gave TPM and ROTS a fairly good shake.

Definitely a book to get for your collection for the illustrations alone. The story is just quite glaringly lacking. But if you're reading this as a collection of bedtime stories for small children, it's perfect...mostly. Darn you, Calliope Glass for only giving AOTC 1 page!!! Arrrgggghhh. Okay, I'll stop now and leave you with some more adorableness.