8. Build This!

The Lego Ideas Book

By Daniel Lipkowitz

Dorling Kindersley, 2011

$24.99, ages 7-15, 200 pages.

Lego fans will be spilling their buckets of bricks to build, build, build after flipping through this amazing book of Lego building projects.

The idea behind the "ideas book" is to take what kids already have, all those buckets of bricks and Lego sets, and turn them into something their directions never showed them.

Assembled by Lego Group Senior Writer Lipkowitz with the help of six Lego fan builders from around the world, the ideas book shows hundreds of models readers can recreate, as well as tips, techniques and alternative designs.

This is a book meant to inspire rather than instruct, so in lieu of page-consuming building steps and long lists of bricks, readers are shown close-ups of completed designs to spur variations of their own.

Each spread also contains inside advice to bring their building abilities up a notch.

One page explains how to lock a castle door and create the look of a stone wall, others tell how to install trap doors and erect a rope bridge across a jungle.

Over the course of six chapters, readers see the world as it would look if it were all made of Legos.

There are vehicles of all shapes and sizes, buildings and furniture, space ships and aliens, robots, pirate ships, even picture frames and jewelry boxes.

This is the book to get children's minds racing with ideas, and get children trying to outdo themselves and make something even more cool.

How cool? Listen in.

Once all those bricks have settled in a landslide on the floor, you just might hear the sound of a new set snapping in place their heads.