I can't even begin to explain how much I love this book. Obi-Wan has become my favorite character and learning about how he became a Jedi is so interesting! ( )

This series. Oh, this series. I'm certainly not the intended audience here (I'm old enough to have my own young reader), but this is one of my favorite entries in the EU for one clear reason: it's an object lesson in why Qui-Gon is pretty much the worst Master ever.

These books make me want to pull Obi-Wan aside and say, "Look, I know you want to be a Jedi Knight more than anything else in the world. But Qui-Gon? That way lies madness, kiddo. His first apprentice went rogue; he'll make incredibly, painfully clear that he doesn't want you as an apprentice while pretty much treating you like an apprentice and he'll make your head spin with it; he'll have to be repeatedly browbeaten by Yoda before he officially and reluctantly takes you on; he'll be aloof, cold, and a downright dick to you; he'll give you a rock for your special birthday; he'll abandon you with haste and glee when his third apprentice comes along; and spoiler alert: third verse is the same as the first. He will break your heart, you'll end up a crazy hermit in the desert, and you'll have fared better than most because Qui-Gon is pretty much going to end the universe as you know it. Don't do it. Go be a farmer. Please, be a farmer. You'll meet a nice girl, you'll help feed people and fix their planets, and you'll be so much happier for it."

Sadly, I can't pull Obi-Wan aside and instead I'll end up reading the Qui-Gon Manual on How to Be the Worst Father Figure Ever.

Sidebar: This series also has the best kicky disco covers of any Star Wars series. If you look only at the covers, they tell the tale of Qui-Gon, a long-in-the-tooth hustler, training his new star pupil in the ways of esoteric go-go dancing. Hell, even that might've been a better life than the one Obi-Wan actually ended up with. ( )

OK for kids, I guess, but as an adult I found the story and characters far too simplistic. This isn't the case with later spinoff series "Last of the Jedi," which I thoroughly enjoyed, so I suppose it just took a while for the plot and characters to find their bearings.

For a more thorough review, please see http://scififantasyfiction.suite101.com/article.cfm/book-review---star-wars-jedi... ( )

(I now maintain a blog just for my kid-lit reviews. Find it at http://kidlit4adults.blogspot.com .)

A friend has convinced me to try my hand this year for the first time at writing children's literature; but I don't actually know anything about children's literature, so am starting the process among other ways by first reading a stack of popular books that have been recommended to me. Today's titles are from yet another long-running series of chapter books for grade-schoolers, the kind of franchise where an endless amount of 30,000-word volumes are cranked out once a month by a series of essentially anonymous authors; and this is actually one of the types of employment I'm hoping to find in the industry myself, which is why I'm reading so many of these types of books these days, to understand more about how exactly they're written.

And indeed, after expecting these to be only middling titles that rely mostly on the strength of the "Star Wars" brand for their commercial success, the three volumes of the "Jedi Apprentice" series I read (volumes 1, 2 and 3) were instead some of the better chapter books I've so far come across this year, with challenging vocabularies and nicely complex moral lessons that have more in common with Zen Buddhism than the Babysitters Club. (But then again, this series is put out by the always excellent Scholastic, so I guess I should've known better.) Although these will only appeal almost exclusively to boys in the 10-to-12 range, they're excellent for what they are, and get the classic "rules" of writing for this age group almost perfect -- for example, they include plenty of periil but very little real-world danger (helped immensely by their fantastical setting), feature plenty of action but a stripped-down non-confusing plot, and also do a nice job for sci-fi novels at exploring both school environments and inter-gender relationships at that age in depth. They're on the large side of such books, a full 30,000 to 35,000 words apiece, and despite their subject matter are not recommended for so-called "reluctant readers." ( )

Peace over Anger
Honor over Hate
Strength over Fear

Twelve-year-old Obi-Wan Kenobi desperately wants to be a Jedi Knight. After years at the Jedi Temple, he knows the power of the Lightsaber and the Force. But he cannot control his own anger and fear. Because of this, the Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn will not take him on as a Padawan apprentice.
Now Obi-Wan is about to have his first encounter with true evil. He must face off against unexpected enemies—and face up to his own dark wishes.
Only then can his education as a Jedi truly begin. ( )