Star Wars Reading Campaign Children's Books Giveaway and Review with Egmont Publishing

Egmont Publishing are working very hard this year to encourage children to develop a love of reading, and one of the ways they're doing it is by releasing a huge range of Star Wars books. We've been sent the Star Wars Treasury: The Original Trilogy and the Star Wars Starfighter Workshop, plus a Star Wars Young Reader each for my 5 and 7 year old boys.

It'll be no surprise to regular readers that my young boys both love reading, we're very lucky. My oldest son was a very reluctant reader, and one of the ways I managed to get him to read was by buying Star Wars books and annuals. We still have them, and my little boys still read them!

The Star Wars Young Readers (rrp £4.99 each) are a hit. Both boys read them through the first night. My 5 year old found his a Level 1 book a little tricky, as he should, and managed with only 2 prompts from his big brother, who wanted to get on with the story...

The Level 1 book Escape From Darth Vader (Michael Siglain and Stephane Roux) retells in simple language the basic rescue of Leia from the Death Star, but is written so that any child who has never seen Star Wars will be able to follow the story. It's not intimidating, there aren't huge chunks of text, and the words pretty much describe the accompanying illustrations to give your child clues and cues.

The Level 2 book Use The Force! (Michael Siglain, Stephane Roux and Pilot Studio) retells Luke's initial meeting and then training with Yoda.

With more text than the Level 1 per page, trickier wording and a more in depth story, and less cartoony illustrations my 7 year old thoroughly enjoyed his book and found it a breeze. If your 7 year old is a competent reader I'd go for Level 3 with longer and more challenging stories.

The Star Wars Treasury: The Original Trilogy by Ryder Windham (rrp £19.99) is in essence an art storybook. Over 227 pages it retells the stories of the original 3 movies - a New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi - accompanied by gorgeous illustrations of scenes from the films by Brian Rood.

The text is written with lots of speech and emotion, so it's great for reading aloud. There are tricky words that will expand your child's vocabulary as you read with them, and as they become more proficient readers around 8-10 years old they will be able to read this treasury alone.

The Star Wars Starfighter Workshop (rrp £19.99) is the book which is currently most popular in my house.  This is a fiction book, an activity book and a model making craft kit all in one. Open it out and on the left you have the story and puzzle book, and on the right 10 sheets of high quality gloss coated card with press out model sections.

The Story And Puzzle Book has some nice puzzles and activities on each page, accompanied by a short clip from the Star Wars A New Hope original movie. It works well, and my 7 year old has completed most of the puzzles and drawings already.

The right hand side of the Starfighter Workshop holds the model parts. 2 large gloss card models - an X-Wing and a Tie Fighter. When built the X-Wing is 22.5cm by 21cm and the Tie Fighter is 8cm by 31cm!

The Star Wars books from Egmont are all a hit here - especially at the moment the Starfighter Workshop! Find out what my boys thought in their video review...

Egmont Publishing very kindly offered one of my readers a copy of both the Starfighter Workshop and the Star Wars Treasury: The Original Trilogy - together worth nearly £40! That Giveaway is now over.

To see my current UK giveaways, please visit my giveaways page...