Star Wars was certainly one of the most interesting and culturally exciting events of the last 1/3 of the 20th century as far as Pop Sci Fi was concerned and deserves to be mentioned.
But the FACT is that it is the MOVIE that got people excited not the novelization which hardly ranks with ODYSSEY, MOBY DICK et all!
It rates with Superman or Batman.

The entire Star Wars saga doesn't and never will have an equal. This book picks up on the things that you might not have in the movie. If you're a dedicated fan, you may be disturbed by the fact that the dialect isn't quite the same as the movie :) If you want to know what happened in the missing moments with Biggs, this is the best way to find out. A wonderful edition to your Star Wars collection, if you can manage to get your hands on it!

I walked into a small public library in Old Metairie,LA last summer. It was during the time of the Phantom Menace's highly anticipated release, and the the small but impressive library had erected an exhibit in Lucas' honor, showcasing various books written in the Star Wars tradition, including Timothy Zahn's highly acclaimed series titled Heir to the Empire (I've read the first one but would like to read the remaining two in the trilogy).

Most of the covers exuded the typical Sci-Fi style corresponding to glossy, colorful covers with shiny, sleek battle cruisers plus exotic locales and mysterious aliens.

But I noticed one that looked quite different: I walked up to the exhibit and noticed a rather medium sized grayish book with the faded spartan lettering on the cover: STAR WARS. Just STAR WARS. It reminds me of a classics book, which is not altogether strange since Star Wars, not only in our own era, but in the history of the humanities, is one of our greatest accomplishments, ranking right up there with Homer's Odyssey, Dumas' The Three Musketeers, and Melville's Moby Dick.

All I can say is: Bravo, Lucas!

I just watched the video and I am ordering copies for some people in my school district and some students hoping to be teachers someday. It was great! It provided some practical and exciting strategies that can be used in the educational setting. I am inspired to continue to find ways to support and improve public education in my community.

Local governments are abusing their power in many places because courts usually don't enforce private property rights guaranteed by our Constitution. This is the story one man's 5 year struggle bouncing from court to court, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to save his land.

The surprise ending shows the extent of the evil in some people. The only part of the book I didn't like was the section of verbatim court testimony.

The book is also partly an autobiography and Lucas has led an interesting life.

I have always been a huge fan of the Willow film. Val Kilmer and Joanne Whalley had great chemisty and it worked perfectly.

In the novel Kilmer's Madmartigan character doesn't come through as well. His wise-cracking antics and such are not presented well, if they are present at all.

The novel lacks description. Not of just places and people, but of actions. Too much does it rely on script-like dialogue to tell the story. Leaving the reader to figure out on their own what s happening during dialogues.

Like most novelizations, I read this one to hopefully hear a little more that went on in the story. Thankfully it was there. Some strange additions and welcome additions were in this novel. Entirely new characters and small new storylines are there. To my shock there is a red-haired king involved of which I don't want to go into too much detail, but the novel really surprised me with this little tidbit.

I grabbed a copy of this novel mainly to introduce me to the stories by George Lucas and Chris Claremont series that takes place after this story. Shadowmoon, Shadowdawn, and Shadowstar.

I don't regret that I read this novel as it only took me one sitting, but hopefully the rest of the Willowish novels will be better.

I am a big fan of the film and decided I would read the Chris Claremont/George Lucas trilogy that carries on the story recently.

I figured I would start with the novel before the trilogy, Willow (the film's novelization).

I have read some pretty terrible novelizations, and some really great ones. This one I'm giving an average rating. Overall it moves just like the film, although some of the action and most of the comedy that was in the film, is missing in the novel. Madmartigan's humour must have totally relied on Val Kilmer's performance. The other characters are up to par though.

The greatest reason to read this novel as a fan of the movie are the few scenes that must have been cut, or too expensive for the film. One thing that totally shocked me was the entire new character and storyline that was missing from the film! Sorsha's father! In the film you never meet him. In the novel it is great!

It's a short novel that took me a sitting to read. I don't recommend this novel to anyone other than fans of Willow, who will really enjoy the missing bits from the film!

I got this book when I was in second grade (nine years ago) and now I have read it so many times the book is almost falling apart! I also watch the movie very often. I can't wait until all the books following this one are out!

This book is nothing but George Lucas' personal tribute to the technology that made him a superstar. This book is filled with rhetoric, unsubstantiated claims and lots of full-color pictures. It does not have any use for someone in a teacher education program, as it reads more like a coffee table book. The included CD-ROM is the icing on the huge cake of b.s., and goes to show, once again, that if you are rich and famous, you can publish anything.

During a time of state budget crises that are calling for drastic changes to the educational system as we know it, Edutopia provides a breath of fresh air and a sense of hope for teachers and parents. With the budget cuts looming , and demand for accountability as measured by performance on simplified tests, and the need to do more with less, the more is, unfortunately, focused on increasing test performance. Conspicuously absent from the center of concerns is the children's learning process.

In creating Edutopia, the book, the newsletter and the web resources, The George Lucas Educational Foundation's work finds our children and their learning processes at the heart of the educational system. While many of us have grown weary of reforming education, and have resigned ourselves to the concept of "tinkering" with the system (Tyack and Cuban, 1995, Tinkering Toward Utopia), Edutopia has held on to the belief in the power of the people to make significant, lasting, and positive changes to the way our children learn, develop, and grow through the educational process. While there is great value to tinkering, Edutopia shows us that the only limitations we have are those that we place on ourselves. The contributors to this book shows us how much power is unleashed when we allow ourselves to let go of our fears of change and our reluctance to embrace the possibilities that lie in the amazing digital age.

Edutopia is not a traditional educational book. If you are looking for a book on learning theories, research studies, or foundations of a discipline, Amazon will be able to help you locate them. There are also books that will tell you how poorly we are doing at educating all children. Edutopia is a unique book filled with creative approaches to learning, assessment, community involvement, expanding the classroom, creatively shaping the learning environment. This book is about the passion that we have for the development of our children. The authors urge us to break out of the lament which plagues our practice, to free our imagination to use emerging technology to energize learning. The book is filled with real life examples with ordinary teachers who take extraordinary steps to inculcate innovative and substantial changes to the children's learning process. These are examples of people who believe that they can make a difference, that real learning can occur despite budget cuts and "uncontrollable" outside forces. The stories are about people who refuse to settle.

When I read the newspapers or listen to the evening news and get discouraged with talks of the demise of our children's education, and I am tempted to settle for the mere tinkering of our children's educational process, I pick up Edutopia and am reminded that there are people out there who are making incredible differences in the lives of children.

This is exactly what it promises to be --a very informative description of the best learning contexts that are being built with new technologies. Rather than celebrating the technology it focuses on the relationship between and among people and the way in which new forms of information and communication are reshaping these relationships.

If you want to think beyond the two covers of a book and 4 walls of a classroom, if you want to redesign schools and their communities as places of serious, playful learning in social contexts, this book will push your thinking. Yes, this book (and the 11 short movies) celebrates learning. No, this book is a not a critical examination of research that validates the learning outcomes although, for some of these projects, such studies exist.

A "success story" has value because it shows us how people have come to work together to create projects that push the boundaries past the routine. The purpose of these stories is to not simply to inform. We need stories like the ones in this book to inspire us, to energize us to move beyond what is now, and to realize that each of us can and should be thinking about what can be.

I use this book in my graduate courses to expose students to the range of project-based learning applications of technology, the evolving role in technology in assessment, the ways in which communities have become more involved in education and how communication technology is reshaping professional development into a continual everyday process. While a consistent philosophical and theoretical position underlies the examples, students need to abstract the principles.

The range and choice of stories is excellent but the stories are brief. Personally, I would have preferred a single spaced book with twice the information on each of the projects and examples. But in a multimedia connected world, stories can link to web sites, videos, and more extensive information on the Edutopia site and on the web. Celebrating success may not fit the critical stance that some take toward the work of education, but with all of the challenges, it is inspiring when people connect.

Wouldn't it be great for Lucas to turn his genius to an epic for our time, one that has relevance. He missed Lord of the Rings. HE has a change to do Defenders of the Holy Grail, but somone will probably beat him to it. We need movies that connect us with today's emotions, GEORGE

Well, this is a great book that helps you know more about the 20th century greatest myth maker: Mr. Lucas. Although the book is a little repetitive (You just can read so many times the story behind Thx or how he became a film maker) it lets you inside the professional life of a man known for not giving many interviews in a year. The best article is by far the 1997 interview-story that John Seabrook wrote. And here's a little note for the editors, in page 186, the writer mentions that Lucas adopted 3 daughters, so next print you may want to correct that one. Enjoyable book, but get the cheap edition :-)

While not the best fantasy movie of all time, Willow had its charm, not in the least of which were its senses of hope, wonder and humor.

Well don't come into here looking for any of that because it's gone; stripped away to make room for dark, brooding, and hugely convoluted.

Since it occurs in the prologue, it's no great spoiler to tell you that just about every character you knew and loved from the film is killed off in the first twenty pages or so, leaving you with a core cast of Willow and the inexplicably French Brownies, and even they are rendered nigh unrecognizable. The void is 'filled'-and I use that term as loosely as possible- with a dense soldier, a tomboy Princess, a zombie warrioress and, well, another dense soldier. Are we entertained yet?

Adding insult to injury, the story itself is a confusing, muddled mess so what should be a tense battle scene or a poignant moment is rendered unreadable. Claremont has a handful of favorite description nouns, which becomes readily apparent the fifth or so time someones says or does something with asperity, until you're rolling your eyes so often concerend parties will ask whether or not you're having a stroke. The worst of it is, the few times we do get any insight into what happened to other people between the prologue and the present things are presented so vaguely you're still none the wiser. Did Willow's son somehow get turned into a hellhound? Does Willow kill him? Is it the same hellhound that appears at the start of the book? I have no idea and I read the friggin' thing!

The dragon is the only piece of entertainment you'll find because he's the only one with any heart or humor to him, but even that was short lived as the author very kindly takes him away from us after a few, all-to-brief scenes. The solitary other plus the book has going for it is that it's so unlike the film in every way that it's unlikely to taint your feelings for it. A few of the characters have some coincedental names, that's all.

Save your money and re-watch the movie.

Star wars, indiana jones and, this? my only explanation is that george lucas only provided the ideas for this story and had no part in the actual novel. As i've indicated, shadow moon starts out well, with familiar characters from the willow movie, and goes down hill FAST. Chris claremont, who is on top of his game in the X-men comic books, made a terrible mistake jumping into fantasy novels. This is the first book in a long time that has truly been a chore to read. Weak characters, anticlimactic battles, and a truly pathetic supporting cast ( two words; Brownies suck!) are just a few of the flaws. If there were parts of the book that were good, I could say it was an unpolished gem, but as it is, the gem isn't only unpolished, but still embedded in a giant chunk of earth.

For someone who loved Willow, I was first excited by this book, and then I was terribly shocked at the dramatic twist in tone. As other reviewers have stated, it was difficult to accept a novel that opens by killing off the characters you love best, and drastically altering the ones who remain. I stuck with it, though, because when I put my subjectivity aside, it was an intriguing, if dark, story. It's unfortunate that it takes so long to let go of what you lost in order to learn to love what you get; and that hangs over your reading of the book like the shadow in its name. Because it is worth the read. A richly detailed and creative landscape/setting and finely edged characters bring this story to vivid life and give it depth lacking it much comtemporary fiction. I was also drawn in by the writing style - the author has a voice which is complex and unique. In the end I was left with the impression not of device or triteness, but of sincerity and boldness - and couldn't wait for the sequel.

Now you can have the all the stilted dialog with none of the special effects to distract you from the great writing. Oops, also included is a 16 page color photo gallery. Trust me. Jar Jar Binks is even more annoying in print. Phantom Menace...great name for it.

Why buy this version of the Episode I screenplay? Far from a facsimile, this is an edited version of the shooting script, modified to fit the action exactly. I DON'T recommend it. If you want a copy of the script, I recommend the Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace Illustrated Screenplay, which has storyboards of all the action and is the original shooting script, with scenes not appearing in the finished version. Only buy this if you want a version that fits the movie exactly.

I enjoyed this one more than the one littered with old storyboard pictures. As much as I love storyboards and original drafts, I don't want them stuck in in with the dialogue. Often the pictures seemed to distract me from the storyline.

I prefer it in the original size, with similar print font to what it would have professionally. No distractions, nothing to cloud my view of it. Just me and the story I love!

There are some good films made from bad novels and some bad films made from good novels, but the only thing that you can hope for from a novelization based on a screenplay is that it will fill in where the film left off, describing things that went by in a flash that maybe you wanted to spend some more time with. Raiders gives you nothing more than what you saw in the movie and sometimes considerably less.

I can accept a film novelisation which differs, sometimes radically, from the motion picture, but the adaptation of "Raiders" changes one rather important element: excitement. The first Indiana Jones film is a roaring B-movie, packed with adventure and thrills, albeit at the expense of any real depth (which is unsurprising when you consider the source material). This book is a shallow plodder, crippled by the author's remarkable inability to describe an action scene. Considering that there is little else in the plot that's a major handicap. Descriptions are confusing, unimaginative and fleetingly terse, while the attempts to flesh out motivations and characters are sporadic and seem incomplete. Several of the best moments in the film are missing here, which may disappoint fans, but to my mind the fault with this book is not that it fails to either represent or add to the movie, but that it's a scrappy bit of hack work in its own right. Not the best of the three movie novelisations, by a long chalk.

If a novelization of a movie is done well, such as this one, it will entertain you as much as the actual movie. This novel does just that. It keeps moving along just like the movie and is quite entertaining, especially with the added detail you don't get in the movie.

A good read for any age bracket.

I've always been a Lucasfilm/Star Wars fanatic, and have always gobbled up any shred of info, whether it be about the stories, or the behind-the-scenes realm. I'm one of those fans who knows the names of the modelmakers responsible for those great, worn ships in the original film.

And while I am a bit over the top in regards to what I know, this in no way absolves John Baxter for the mountainous errors in his work. Just because I'm sharp on a lot regarding Lucas doesn't mean that Baxter's innacurracies won't be such a sin if they fall on uninformed ears.I won't go through each and every flaw, but let me just warn you that this book drops the ball repeatedly regarding what Lucasfilm fans would call rudimentary data.

I t's best to bypass this mess and select David Pollock's "Skywalking" instead. It's the oldest and still the best bio on this great talent. Another book that proved to be immensely entertaining (though only covering the era of the first trilogy) was Garry Jenkin's "Empire Building." If it's behind the scenes Star Wars stuff you're after, then this is absolutely THE book to get.
In closing, I'm most disappointed with Mythmaker because it pales in comparison to Baxter's Steven Spielberg bio released a few years before. It makes me wonder how accurate (or innacurate) THAT bio was.....

I am a big George Lucas fan and I found a few errors in this book. The one that really bothered me was that the author repeatedly stated that Jim Henson did the puppeteering and voice for Yoda. IT WAS FRANK OZ NOT JIM HENSON! That was soooo annoying! I kept wishing that the author was around so that I could just scream it in his face!

Other than these small details, the book was pretty good. But still, I can't help but wonder what else was inaccurate that I just took as new information.

This was the first real biography I read of George Lucas; since it I have read Dave Pollock's Skywalking, which is a far better and balanced look at the creator of Star Wars, George Lucas.

John Baxter's bio on Lucas is really mean toward its subject. In his narrative of the filmmaker's life he routinely slams Lucas, pointing out all the mistakes George made in his life and never really focusing on the happiness Lucas has brought to millions of moviegoers with the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films. In the end, it seems Lucas wins over Baxter with The Phantom Menace, but considering how much Baxter seems to hate George Lucas, I think I'm reaching a little bit.

Not only does Baxter hate Lucas, his book is littered with typos and errors. He never once gets the name of Steven Spielberg's college--Long Beach State--right (he calls it the University of California, Long Beach at one point and California State College, Long Beach in another). He mangles some of the details of The Phantom Menace as well (says that Valorum was played by Ian McDiarmid, when it was Terence Stamp who really played him). Some of the more gossipy parts in the book are backed up with shoddy references, too.

Another problem is that Baxter goes off on a lot of other tangents that are only vaguely related to Lucas. For instance, he discusses what Francis Coppola was doing while Star Wars was being produced, and the problems Star Wars' director of photography--Gil Taylor--had with Stanley Kubrick. Better editing would have eliminated these parts.

If you want a better and more balanced account of George Lucas' life, read Skywalking by Dave Pollock. Pollock doesn't take a critical machete to Lucas' life or films and there aren't any editorial mistakes.