Super Mario Little Golden Book (Nintendo)

The Super Mario Little Golden Book is a bit strange. It tells the barest approximation of a story, focusing instead on introducing the characters and glossing over plot points. It has less depth than the average instruction booklet Story page would for a corresponding Super Mario video game. The Super Mario series is, of course, a series of video games, and yes, the overwhelming majority of the games have a paper-thin plot (Bowser captured Princess Peach and Mario has to rescue her). That having been said, it remains disappointing that this book fails to have much of a plot., The book opens by introducing Princess Peach. It then moves on to introducing the other major characters of the Super Mario universe–Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, the Toads, Bowser, various enemies, the Koopalings, and Bowser Jr. It explains that Bowser captured Princess Peach and Mario, Luigi, and Yoshi used some power-ups to rescue her and save the Mushroom Kingdom. It weirdly summarizes most of the Mario series’ mainline games in the broadest strokes., The disappointment I have in looking at this book from a reading perspective is that it does not try to do anything more than the barest structure of a story. While the games have gameplay and creative level design to push to the forefront, this book is a collection of character introductions. As a point of contrast, in 1990, a Super Mario book was published as a Golden Look Look Book–“Super Mario Bros. Trapped in the Perilous Pit.” It told a version of the story of how Mario and Luigi came to arrive in the Mushroom Kingdom, an early encounter with Bowser, the princess getting captured, and how Mario and Luigi used power-ups in a creative way (for a book for young kids) to save her and defeat Bowser. It told a story, had dialogue between the characters–dialogue consistent with their appearance in the then-contemporary Super Mario Bros. Super Show animated segments)–and had a beginning, middle, and end that flowed. It wasn’t a literary masterpiece, but it enhanced the minimalistic story from the games to expand into a narrative that worked well as a children’s book., This book is a glorified instruction manual opening. I can see a situation where young kids who are diehard fans of Mario might enjoy it for the artwork, but there is nothing of any substance here., The artwork is pretty good. I’ve seen the majority of it before, though some of it may be redrawn to be stylistically consistent. There’s an image of Bowser later in the book that is different from other images of him that I’ve seen, though it’s also a tad off-model., I’d hesitate to recommend this book except to a kid who already loves Mario. It won’t get anyone interested in the games or the series. I’m sure there are a lot of gamer parents out there who are excited to share their hobby with their kids. My kids, particularly my oldest (almost 5 at the time of this review), are interested in the Mario universe. They like the characters, have some toys like the Hot Wheels cars, and they like the games to the extent they can play them. However, this book failed to really hold their interest, and these same kids will sit through a longer, meatier Berenstain Bears book without issue. My main recommendation, then, is do not buy this blind. If you can find a copy at a store to flip through, you’ll see whether it’s something that would appeal to your kid pretty instantaneously, as there is not much there to see besides the artwork. If I got this as a kid, I think I would have liked it a lot just for the art, but I grew up at a time when there was not much in the way of video game merchandise other than the games themselves. Reading it as a parent, it’s shallow and largely devoid of plot.

I had to get this one for my Golden Books collection. It’s not only a stroll down memory lane, but also a keepsake. 🙂

Great deal on this book