The Rise of Skywalker: a Little Golden Book

 The Rise of Skywalker: a Little Golden Book, cover illustration by Caleb Meurer, interior illustrations by Alan Batson

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I love this movie SO much and was super excited to dig into this little book. As always with these little golden books, the illustrations were adorable and the story was succinctly-ish told. Oddly enough, no author was listed which I found extremely strange as someone absolutely was responsible for the choices made in what to keep, what to leave out, what dialogue to include, and, in some cases, what order to put things in--some of the choices were...interesting. And some of the artwork, while cute, didn't really capture the characters all that well. In fact, some characters were barely recognizable--Han and Lando for two (see below). Rey and Kylo/Ben of course featured prominently and they were done quite well!

As for the narrative choices, the whole bit at the Sinta Glacier Colony with Boolio and then the lightspeed skipping was left out, but Rey's healing the vexis on Pasaana is included complete with picture. Chewbacca's supposed death and real capture are both completely ignored (although lightning bolts shooting out of Rey's fingertips is included--see below) as is Rey, C-3PO, BB-8, Finn, and Poe's time on the Steadfast above Kijimi which was the whole climax of the narrative to me!! Instead, the book says Kylo tells Rey that Palpatine is her grandfather on Kef Bir while battling on the Death Star II...wait...huh?!? And there's a whole page dedicated to the conversation between Ben and the memory of his father. Another odd choice was saying Luke "appeared through the Force, holding her lightsaber" instead of catching it and "presenting her with a second lightsaber--Leia's" instead of him showing her its location. And while the word "orbak" was used--yay!!--the word "dyad" was not--boo!! Also, there's no mention at the end of Rey taking on the name of "Skywalker"...one of THE MOST important parts of the entire movie!!! Like the whole rounding out of the 9-part saga!!! I don't know what was going on with whoever came up with this particular narrative, but it was wonky in all sorts of ways. Maybe the reason they didn't list an author was because they were scared of any backlash??...especially since the movie itself got so much backlash as it stands--which I believe was completely undeserved, but hey, the world can be strange sometimes.

I get leaving out the supposed death and actual capture of Chewbacca--could be difficult for a little one to relive or take in. But there's a whole page dedicated to Palpatine sucking the life force out of Ben and Rey with his evil face hovering above them (see below) such that I don't know how they decided one thing was handle-able and the other was not...strange.

So, if your little Padawan wants a Rise of Skywalker recap, go for it and buy this book--the illustrations are cute regardless. But if your little Padawan has a good eye for accuracy, they're going to notice the narrative issues. So weird they mixed things up the way they did. I'll leave you with a wonderful illustration of Rey training with BB-8 and the remote on Ajan Kloss!