Brick Fairy Tales [LEGO Book Review]

I brought some light reading along on my cottage vacation. A few weeks ago, I found Brick Fairy Tales by John McCann, Monica Sweeny, and Beck Thomas on sale at Chapters. It looked like fun, so I picked up a copy. While I have been slowly working on it since I bought it, I really had the time to sit down and give it the attention that it deserves here at the cottage. The book is made up of a selection of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. But, instead of traditional drawings to illustrate the stories, the authors have recreated the scenes using LEGO and Minifigures.

This book is a lot of fun for many reasons. First and foremost, I love the idea of telling stories with LEGO photos. My new hobby is LEGOgraphy, so this book is right up my alley. Also, there are a lot of funny shots in this book. Sometimes it is because of the Minifigure faces used to show expression. But, I found the funniest stuff was born through the limitations of the LEGO bricks and the Minifigures themselves. Imagine LEGO Cinderella trying to hide in a tree from the prince…

Then there are the guest appearances from various LEGO themes. I enjoyed recognizing some characters, or parts of them, and seeing them put to different uses. Darth Maul has always been my favorite Star Wars character, and he made an appearance as the devil in one story. Another example is a warg from Lord of the Rings playing the part of the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood.

This book also gives you a taste of a bygone era. These stories are not the usual Disney versions we have all gotten used to. I found reading the original versions to be interesting because they are so different from what we read today, and would never pass as best sellers now. Some of these stories make no sense. For example, Clever Hans essentially drags this woman through the woods by a rope, ties her up in his barn, mutilates a bunch of animals, throws the eyeballs of the animals at the girl, and then she inexplicably marries him a sentence later. Who knew that’s all you had to do to get a wife?

This is a neat new twist on some really old stories. It is funny, and shows you a different type of storytelling from another point in history. Best of all, it is all done with LEGO.

Until next time,

-T.N.B.