Beautiful Lego, by Mike Doyle

Beautiful LEGO is a veritable feast for Lego-lovin' eyes!

Our entire family enjoyed browsing and staring at the amazing images within this book. This is not your typical how-to LEGO guide book. Rather, it is a collection of photographs of the amazing things that other (brilliant) people have created with their LEGOs.

The book is divided up into sections, showing off various animals, movie characters, vehicles, cube men, aliens, and astounding-looking landscapes. Truly, the cover art on this book speaks entirely for itself. Do you want to look at jaw dropping LEGO pieces of art? Look no further!

The author and editor of this book, Mike Doyle, is a LEGO art creator himself. Amid these designs by 77 different artists, you'll find some of Doyle's creations as well. His pièce de résistance, if you will, includes an incredibly detailed delapadated Victorian House (set "in mud" though...I don't get that). Still, whether or not I understand what the artist wanted to get at, it's still amazing to look at the pictures and try to figure out how they created the sculptures that they did. If you like LEGOs at all, you'll be interested in this book! We've already devoted hours of our time browsing it. (I'm not exaggerating on the time. We took it with us on our recent road trip. We literally have spent hours with this book!)

Need some additional proof of the wonder which is contained in Beautiful LEGO?! Here are a few of the images that you will see inside:

As I say, it's a feast for the eyes. And while none of us are likely to have all the LEGOs needed or necessary to make the incredible landscapes, kids can definitely be inspired to use the bricks that they own to make their own beautiful LEGO designs. And that's why I love this book as much as I do - it inspires. (And humbles. I should mention that it also humbles.)

For LEGO enthusiasts, this book is a must see!

** I can't fail to make one note about the book. Despite the fact that the title is "Beautiful Lego" there are some rather ugly Lego creations contained within. For example, there's one sculpture called "The Doll" which looks as if you can peel back the skin and see the 'blood and guts' of the doll on the inside. I think it looks creepy and not at all beautiful. There are a couple of less than beautiful additions. However, if I had to slap a percentage on creepy vs. astounding, I would say this book is 5% creepy and 95% pure awesome.

Many thanks to No Starch Press for sending a copy of this book my direction in order to facilitate this review. I received no additional compensation for this post. And all enthusiastic opinions are 100% my very own.