Meet the noble and wise Jedi of the High Republic! When a disaster strikes in hyperspace, putting the people of Hetzal Prime in grave danger, only the Jedi of the High Republic can save the day!
Summary for The Great Jedi Rescue
A picture book for kids, released as part of the new High Republic Era! I have a four year old, so this seems like the perfect fit. I decided to grab a copy at my local bookstore and see what she thought of the story.
Here’s how that went…
“It was okay, I guess.”
Daughter
With her thoughts out of the way, here’s my own review of the book.
Hedda Casset dies. Like… ripped apart at lightspeed, along with her crew and and a lot of other people that were involved in the Legacy Run disaster. Before I picked up this book I thought the whole thing would be summarized as “an accident put people in danger, the jedi are here to help”, but right out of the gate I’m given a kiddo-approved cartoon depiction of a tragedy that killed a lot of people.
That’s heavy for a picture book, especially for a curious kid that’s old enough to ask about the ship and what happened to it.
As an adult reader, it was actually pretty cool to see some visual depictions from the events covered in Charles Soule’s book, The Light of the Jedi.
There were lots of words, a bit heavy on exposition when it comes to similar competing picture books, like Pete the Cat and the Bake Sale, or other titles in the 8″x8″ category.
To be honest, having held it and read it, I can’t imagine my kiddo would ever have grabbed this one without some heavy-handed guidance from my own interest. I suspect they knew that, and the book seems to reflect that mindset, so I suppose the publisher knows their audience. That is to say, it felt like it was made as a cool companion book for my kid to read while I read the “real” version.
There were also stickers. That’s always a win for a kid.
Three out of Five Death Stars.
The book weighs in at 24 pages, with a few pages of stickers, some really cool illustrations, and a summary of the larger Light of the Jedi novel. It’s not going to be my kid’s favorite picture book, and it’s not going to replace Pete the Cat, but what pictures it does have are cool, and for someone that might not want to read Charles’ full novel, this is more fun than running to Wookiepedia for the synopsis.
TechnicoolDad 