The Lego Ideas Book: Unlock Your Imagination

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 .

good product

We seem to keep buying Lego kits and the boys keep making other things out of them than the expected ones. Once I saw this book, I knew it was a better purchase than yet-another kit. The thousands of Legos we already own need to be utilized and this book is brilliant at that. My grandsons are 8 and 6. They understand the book and can utilize it. The information about the ideas, about what "you" are putting together from the instructions, that part of the book is an unexpected bonus. The book is not just a series of drawings where one is told how to assemble something. It is an inspirational book filled with ideas and those ideas are put into context so the builder knows the why and the what of the project they are assembling. All that said, this book is suitable for an adult. It's both a kid book (age 8 and up) AND a grown-up one. I suspect my son-in-law will utilize the book's project ideas as much as his boys will. Heavy construction, well-made book that can last through years of use. Thick paper, brightly illustrated, easy to understand. A great bargain for the money, considering the cost of all those Legos we need to utilize, the cost of all the Legos kits now in containers with absolutely no relevant link to their original intent.

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!

My kids are huge fans of legos but we dont always have a kit on hand. We do have a million random pieces of legos though. This book is perfect is spark their imagination. Often times they don't follow the book's designs but will be inspired by them and create their own version.

My boys love Legos and for every birthday or holiday ask for kits. My problem with the kits is that they instruct how to build a particular thing and don't inspire them to build anything. They only do that after said thing is built, deconstructed and they've managed to lose the instructions. But I digress. This book has sections on lots of stuff - castles and houses, weapons and household items, things that move or fly...and shows you some awesome creations, plus provides some insight into the kinds of bricks/pieces needed to build 'more like this.' This inspires kids to start building the kinds of things that interest them, not just recreating someone else's build. Makes me wish that Lego tubs of random pieces were easier to find without having to buy overpriced Ebay lots. It's also resulted in hours of imaginative play without relying on instructions or technology--both are serious bonuses in my book.

This was purchased as a gift for my nephew who is 6 (sorry, 6 "AND A HALF" he's correcting). He has gotten hooked on Legos in the last 6mos or so and Legos are everything now. Lives, Breaths, Dreams Legos. When I saw this book I knew it would be a smash. I wanted it to just show him all these Legos things he hadn't even realized were able to be built--- and, to its credit, it did that for sure! The book has loads of pictures showing all the different things that people built out of Legos. The quality was good as well: large and thick pages, detailed pictures and graphics. My nephew loved it when he opened it. He couldn't wait to try and build some of the things in there.... Aaand the reason for only giving it 3 stars is because he didn't build anything out of the book. He couldn't. It doesn't provide ANY help for the kids who can't believe what they're seeing to actually make it or even give advice or help on how to maybe BEGIN to build something like the pictures in the book. To be fair, the description never claimed that instructions would be given or that it would show how to build anything...I shouldnt have assumed that it would give the kids help on how to start work on the amazing things Legos could build... Without help on how to make what they're showing then this "Ideas Book" is just a glorified picture book letting these adult Lego Constructionists show off... My nephew lost interest after realizing he didn't have any way to make anything in the book (a lot of it is extremely elaborate and detailed --we tried to do some on our own and failed miserably.) In conclusion, my advise is just look up pictures on Google of what people have made out of Legos. ...at least that way you may get a link to a site that can give directions on how to build what is in the pictures. Get yourself together Lego

I was not expecting a whole lot from this book for my 10 year old and I to build from, but this book has a ton of really cool ideas. I'm very impressed by the number of ideas they fit into it. It's not a big deal since it's really a book about ideas, but a couple more images of the item building steps would be great, but I get that it is a book about ideas, not instructions on how to build all the items in the book. There are a ton of pictures with very well done projects, some very small and others very large (not too big for a 10 year old, just right) But this book has even been great for my 4, 6, and 12 year olds. There are ideas for everyone, including me.

O livro é obrigatório para fãs do Lego, mas deveria mostrar mais passos para os mais novos poderem construir também

Nos encantó!!!!

この本のいいところは作例がアップで写真で掲載されているところですね。 写真が大きくてどう作っているのかがよくわかります。 それこそページの半分は写真です＾＾。 しかも裏側から見たアングルや一部をばらして内部構造を写してくれてたりしてすごくわかりやすいです。 英語がわからなくても全然問題ありません。 ＬＥＧＯが趣味の人には絶対お勧めです。

El libro muestra muchos ejemplos para empezar a diseñar tus propias creaciones con Lego. Buen punto de partida aunque es más bien enfocado a un público infantil.

As with all the lego ideas books, this is awesome and has it's own character distinct to the others. Keeps my daughter busy either just reading it or working from it for aaaaaages.