The LEGO Story

June 1, 2022

Award-winning Danish author/critic Andersen tells The LEGO Story, plumbing company archives and interviewing third-generation Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen to discover how his family turned those cute interlocking plastic rectangles into international toy stars (75,000-copy first printing). With The Last Campaign, Pulitzer Prize finalist Brands chronicles the battle between Apache leader, warrior, and medicine man Geronimo and U.S. general William Tecumseh Sherman that would determine the shape of the United States and the fate of Indigenous peoples beyond the Mississippi River. The New York Times best-selling Brinkley chronicles the Silent Spring Revolution of the Sixties, when environmental activists pushed first for legislation aimed at protecting the wilderness, then expanded to fighting the pollutants despoiling Earth and risking public health (200,000-copy first printing). Pulitzer Prize finalist Conover (Newjack) takes us to Cheap Land Colorado, chronicling an off-the-grid community in San Luis Valley where he lived on and off for four years so that he could get close to people who traded security for freedom or had nothing left to lose. A senior writer at the Wall Street Journal, Hilsenrath tracks the career of U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen (35,000-copy first printing). Soros Fellow and chair of the Freelance Taskforce for the National Association of Black Journalists, Hubbard argues that hip-hop ignores or demeans Black women in Ride-or-Die (30,000-copy first printing). In Number One Is Walking, Martin recaps his remarkable acting career in a graphic memoir featuring the artwork of New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss (300,000-copy first printing). With The World Record Book of Racist Stories, comedian Ruffin and big sister Lamar join forces to repeat the success of their New York Times best-selling You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey, detailing the absurdist aspects of everyday racism (75,000-copy first printing). In Control, geneticist Rutherford (A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived) revisits the rise of eugenics from its origins in Victorian England to its awful apotheosis in Nazi Germany and its ongoing legacy today. What's the impact on our psyches of knowing that the universe originated 14 billion years ago and is still expanding? Ask Swimme, author of Cosmogenesis and host and cocreator of PBS's Journey of the Universe. Wrongly accused of drug dealing in New Jersey and sentenced to a life behind bars, Wright (Marked for Life) studied law in the prison library, helped overturn the convictions of numerous fellow inmates, then won his own release and now practices law in the same courtroom where he was convicted (125,000-copy first printing).

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October 15, 2022
A cultural and business history of "a global company and a Danish family who for ninety years have defended children's right to play--and who believe grown-ups, too, should make the time to nurture their inner child." A few dozen pages into his narrative, Danish journalist Andersen turns up a fact that might surprise fans of LEGO (he follows company practice in capitalizing the name but without its customary trademark sign): The idea for the molded plastic bricks was borrowed from a British firm, which led to a patent investigation. "With a handful of pieces like these," as Andersen reconstructs founder Ole Kirk Christiansen's aha moment, "any child would be able to copy real-life tradesmen and become their own masons." That utilitarian note is unsurprising given that Christiansen ran a profitable construction firm that survived the Great Depression in part by building things such as ladders, high chairs, and, yes, toys that placed children in adult roles. In Christiansen's carefully thought-through ideology, it went both ways: Children might play as adults, but adults, he urged, needed to recapture the spirit of childhood play. Andersen links this attention to child development with a sweeping cultural movement. "In the 1940s and early 1950s, several landmark children's books were written in Scandinavia," he writes. "For the first time in world literature, adult writers dared to make children and childlike characters the first-person narrators of children's books, giving children natural-sounding voices." Christiansen would go on to build an empire of toys that expanded in many directions under the care of his descendants--the company is wholly family owned--and eventually led to another treasure: LEGOLAND, the much-beloved Danish theme park. Not every LEGO experiment panned out, and entering the American market (at first in an unlikely partnership with Samsonite, the luggage manufacturer) proved difficult, but the company has continued to thrive. A welcome gift for the LEGO lover in the family and a revealing work of business history as well.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 31, 2022
Biographer Andersen (Astrid Lindgren: The Woman Behind Pippi Longstocking) turns to the legacy of Lego in this charming outing. Using the Lego Group’s archives and conversations with former president and CEO Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen (founder Ole Kirk Christiansen’s grandson), Andersen begins in 1915, in Western Jutland, Denmark, when Christiansen, a carpenter, bought a wood workshop. But his business foundered, only to be saved in 1932 after a lumber merchant saw toys Christiansen made and placed a large order for them. Toys became the center of Kristiansen’s company, and the plastic blocks the company is famous for came about thanks to a mid-1940s wood shortage and inspiration from the “self-locking building bricks” made by an English toy company. Not long after, the company opened a headquarters in Germany, and, after a 1956 PR campaign, “money started rolling in.” The upward trajectory continued in the early 1970s, when “expansion grew by 155 percent,” and by the 1980s, the company signed a deal with McDonald’s in America. Andersen does a great job showing the company’s lasting power through 90 years of change, and the archival photos are a treat. This will delight business history buffs.

November 1, 2022
The story of the LEGO toy company is a tumultuous one, shadowed by bankruptcy and unending obstacles. However, it's also one of perseverance. Andersen wrote this book with access to archives and Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, grandson of founder Ole Kirk Christiansen. LEGO, derived from the Danish leg godt, meaning play well, started as a wooden-toy business in the 1930s. Eventually the company adopted plastic into their manufacturing, and in 1947 the LEGO brick was born. The popularity of LEGO continued to soar, and in the 1950s, the company debuted LEGOLAND and DUPLO, a larger brick for toddler-sized hands. Andersen closely follows the company's evolution to the modern day, including how they once again skirted bankruptcy in 2004 by partnering with contemporary media, film, and gaming culture to produce LEGO sets like Star Wars and Harry Potter. They have continued to grow, creating their own movie franchise and a TV show designed around LEGO building competitions. Those interested in LEGO history will find this book comprehensive and will enjoy interviews, photos, and the evolution of a toy legend.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.