Sunday, February 12, 2012

33 BBY: Star Wars Junior: Droids Everywhere!


Thanks to Plaristes for providing me with the Star Wars Junior books in e-format.  Without his help, there would be no way I could affordably gather these sources and include them into my Star Wars Chronology Project.  I can honestly say without the continued dialogue from those who have been travelling with me from the start, and those new readers journeying with me now, I would find it difficult to find the motivation to keep this project rolling.  Words are meaningless without someone to read them.  The bond between the writer and the reader is an intimate one.
Moving on to the source at hand, when taken into chronological perspective, Star Wars Junior: Droids Everywhere!, is the first time Anakin Skywalker enters Star Wars mythology.  Who knew his entrance would occur in a children’s book? It’s a fun little book, but when I tried to read it to my son yesterday he wasn’t very interested.  But that’s not the book’s fault.

I really haven’t much to say about the book.  The story consists of Watto taking us through his repair shop and introducing us to the droids contained therein.  Of all the droids mentioned I thought the explorer droid was the most interesting.  As Watto tells us of the explorer droid:

“Explorers are tough.  They can keep working even during rockslides, lightning strikes, and blaster fire” (23).

Besides Watto’s droids, I enjoyed the art by Jerry Vanderstelt.  I like the detail he used in the depiction of Watto’s garage.  I think I spent most of my time with this book looking at Watto’s shop and his tools and equipment.  Is Watto holding a tablet device on page 6?  Sure looks like some sort of iPad.  Vanderstelt highlighted one of Star Wars's visual strengths very well – that sense of a lived in universe where everything is not new and shiny. 

For my next post I’ll be wadding into the abyss that is 32 BBY.  I’ll  start by engaging with The Smugglers of Naboo, a Wizards if the Coast RPG adventure.  The next four sources that will follow after that are: Shadows of Coruscant, Cloak of Deception, Tales #5 A summer’s Dream, and Queen in Disguise.  Once I’m done with these sources I’ll line up the next 5 sources and chunk my way through 32 BBY.  How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.  Until then my friends, may the Force be with you.

4 comments:

  1. I'm still stuck at 32 BBY, for two reasons:
    1) I haven't been able to track all the young reader sources, so I've just been hopping around when I've got time, and
    2) I found a great Harry Potter fanfic Methods of Rationality, which is very very long, and I've been reading it during the times I normally spend reading Star Wars, i.e. the hour before going to sleep.

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  2. It took me a long time to get through 32 BBY, too. How did I do it? The same way, one source at a time. :-)

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  3. Oh, I forgot to add that I personally understand the difficulty in tracking these items down. It took me over a year to even find a copy of Droids Everywhere! for sale, and it was from a seller in Australia!

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  4. Hello! I realize this is a rather old post so I'm not sure you'll see this, but I've been trying to get a hold of a copy of this book. Do you happen to still have one you wouldn't mind sharing?

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