The LEGO Adventure Book, Vol. 3, mid to advanced fun brick projects to do and view

Excuse me as I get into my grumpy middle aged man voice. When I was growing up there were no LEGO sets. It was only bricks; very few of them curved and they were only red, white and blue. Now you can create all manner of branded ships, characters, houses and fortresses. But what about the free range builders? Occasionally I’ll look at bulk LEGO collections on eBay. This is the free range, creative building that I do in my imagination and is on full display in The LEGO Adventure Book, Vol. 3.

Did you read about the person who built the world’s largest LEGO model of the USS Missouri? It’s 24 feet of grey, black, red and just a little bit of white, except his work was just recently beaten by a guy that built a 25.5 model of the same ship. That is some genius LEGO building right there.

The models in The LEGO Adventure Book are in the same vein. Except they’re 40 brick by brick breakdowns of how to build your own, putting your creative stamp on cities, robots, planes, sand castles and more. In the book there are 150 models that range from simple chairs, patio furniture and trees to more complex airplanes with step by step instructions.

The projects that are much more complex like the Dordrecht City Gate appear to require thousands of bricks. While a brick middleman such as I couldn’t hope to create something like that at this point, it is impressive to look at. The book has lots of close up photos of the more intricate creations that are so detailed you have to look at them twice to determine if it’s a real building or a LEGO creation.

The LEGO Adventure Book follows Meg as she and Daniel are escorting a prisoner to the Council of Creative Constructionists. The prisoner manages to free all of the evil LEGO creations who promptly go about destroying things. That’s when Meg, Daniel and all of the other LEGOs, Batman, Harry Potter and such make a plan to build ships, robots and more.

In-between each creation Meg has some witty banter with the LEGO whose creation she’s about to help build. Once that’s done the rough step by step illustrations, complete with a photo overview of the pieces you’ll need are included. This is not as detailed as the instructions that you’ll have included in your new LEGO set. It’s the free range building that some people crave and yearn for. What’s also cool about the book is that it encourages you to simply build, even if your bricks aren’t the same color as the ones in the illustrations, just build.