A is for Akbar: a Star Wars alphabet for the wee ones

When Brandon Peat and his wife Emma discovered that they were going to have a baby, they decided that they wanted a better kind of alphabet -- a geeky, Star-Wars-inflected one. So they drew "A is for Akbar," a delightful, pastel illustrated alphabet from the Star Wars universe. And now that the kid, Tycho, is born, they're raising money for his college fund: donate $15 to little Tycho's tertiary education and you'll get a copy of the alphabet in book form as a thank-you.

A is for Ackbar | brandonpeat.com (Thanks, Brandon!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

I really wouldn’t sell that without a license for character likeness if I were you. George takes his licensing very seriously and the last thing you needed was to have the spotlight put on you – it’ll make you a lot of money, but on a blog like this how long do you think it’ll be before Mr. Lucas gets forwarded that link.

A lawsuit wouldn’t just destroy your college fund, it would put an extended financial strain on you (and subsequently your child.)

Or maybe you did license this! I’m just saying because I didn’t see any obvious endorsement on your site and it concerns me.
grikdog

Ho ho ho, Salvation Army bucket got my $20 on Tralfamador.
kmoser

Interesting and cool and geeky, yes. But the whole point of such books is to get kids to associate letters with basic things they’ll encounter in the real world; I doubt they’ll ever actually see Greedo, unless they happen to be watching Star Wars.

If you’re going to give your kid a whimsical, geeky alphabet book, shouldn’t you make it on a more practical subject, e.g. engine repair? “A” is for automobile, “B” is for battery, “C” is for catalytic converter, etc.
shashi2005

Tycho. Great name for a lad.
Anonymous

Ack. Trademark infringement lawsuit in 3, 2, 1…
Skye.Axon

Is “Uncle Luke” OK with this?
andyhavens

Hey! I’ve got a kid! Hey! He’ll want to go to college in a few years! Hey! I wrote/illustrated an alphabet book for him when he was three:

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/aquabet/13524254?productTrackingContext=search_results/search_shelf/center/1

It’s fish-based, rather than Star Wars based. He liked fish a lot when he was three. But it rhymes, too. So there’s that.

Hey! You should buy it and help put him through college, too. You can pretend it’s about Star Wars, if you want. Just use your imagination!
ahmacrom

For the Greedo illustration, add the high heels to facilitate questions from the wee ones.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/dinoi/greedo-was-a-dj0
endymion

Max Rebo called– he’s *very* upset.
penguinchris

Nice artwork, but I don’t get the over-reliance on comic book and video game characters. Some really strange choices, and obvious omissions.

I plan to indoctrinate my kids into Star Wars too, but chances are they’ll never play Shadow of the Empire (or read the comic books), for example, or even anything from the Dark Forces series. They’d probably go their whole childhood (or life) not knowing who some of these characters are.
Anonymous

We actually have a Star Wars ABC book already, and our boys love it. Our 3-year-old was in class the other day discussing the letter O and informed the teacher that Obi-Wan Kenobi started with O. Here is the book we have, got it at the school book fair!

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geek-kids/dc14/
penguinchris

I realized just as I hit submit that as someone else noted, ABC sequences like this are really more useful when they have objects, or things like animals.

And the thing is… there are so many unique objects in Star Wars, all of which have well-known names, if I was approaching such a project from scratch I think I would certainly think of doing objects before doing characters.
turthalion

And my poor kids only have this one that DOESN’T infringe on Lucas’s copyrights:
http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-ABC-Scholastic/dp/0545227380/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1291649375&sr=1-1

and also contains pictures that they can recognize from the films.
jackdavinci

blahblahblah
trademark copyright
blahblah blah
otherwise, awesome
Anonymous

Do they ship internationally does anyone know? (Australia)
Anonymous

I remember the “original” edition:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tweedlebopper/sets/72157600166417445/
Anonymous

Yeah, Greedo needs her heels.
ZippySpincycle

Lots of fun, but isn’t it obvious that X should be of “X-Wing Fighter”?
Stitch

Bonus points for having the text in Aurebesh.
Anonymous

Very tempting, but as every teacher will tell you, kids that are taught the uppercase alphabet before the lowercase alphabet are the bane of their lives.
- Headbone
  
  “Very tempting, but as every teacher will tell you, kids that are taught the uppercase alphabet before the lowercase alphabet are the bane of their lives.”
  
  The teacher should also point out that “they” or in this case “their” refers to the previous noun implying that the kids are the bane of the kids lives. I’m sure you meant the kids are the bane of the teacher’s lives.
  
  Also, I disagree. Teach them upper case first and they are no more or less likely to be baneish. “OMG my students that learned upper case letters first are the BANE of my existence!” Like, uh, hmm, wow…srsly?
Anonymous

That’s very cute, but it seems Mr Lucas will want a piece of that (the subterfuge of donating and receiving a book as a gift is not very convincing). Seems like he should just get it licensed and published and then he really could pay for the kid’s college.