This picture book or coffee table book if you like has a very long title. The full title: Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know: Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. And as you would assume a book with a title this long requires more than one author, four actually: Adam Bray, Cole Horton, Michael Kogge, and Kerrie Dougherty.
If you get the feeling that this books title and abundance of authors is trying to compensate for something, you would be right. First and foremost, this is a book written for juniors, DK says 8-12. It would probably be perfect for a 8 year-old boy. But I wanted more. I wanted the mysteries that the movie brought to use at least hinted at. Seeing as the target demographic is 8-12 year-old boys it makes sense that the bulk of the book deals with descriptions of characters, buildings, and droids/robots.
I did learn things I didn’t know before leafing through the pages, so it is a worth while checkout from your library, but unless you have some Star Wars fans that fall in the target age group I wouldn’t purchase this one. Keep to the books for the most part. If you have watched the Clone Wars and are watching Rebels you will already know more that what is in this book. There are only four pages or so in the back of the book that pertain to The Force Awakens, so don’t get this if you think it will reveal more about the movie.
Having said that the pictures are great quality like every DK book and there is a lot of information there.