LEGO fans – and anyone with an interest in the world’s most beloved toy company – will be able to read the full history of the company in Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen’s authorised biography by renowned Danish author Jens Andersen this Christmas.
Last year, Et Liv Med LEGO was published in Danish, tantalising LEGO fans around the world. Jens Andersen’s book promised to be more than an authorised biography of Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, but also a history of the LEGO company as a whole, going back to when Ole Kirk Kristiansen founded the company in 1932 (and earlier). Now, fans will be delighted to know that The LEGO Story: How a Little Toy Sparked the World’s Imagination is about to be released as an English translation.
Read an exclusive excerpt from the book in Issue 98 of Blocks, the monthly LEGO magazine – available now!
While LEGO history has been examined before – not least in the pages of Blocks magazine – Jens Andersen (who has also written biographies of the Danish royal family) has spent hours interviewing third generation LEGO owner Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, who is discussing his family and the company he owns at greater length than ever before. In case you have any doubt about what this promises to be, Kjeld himself said: ‘This book tells the story of how my family built the LEGO brand.’
The LEGO Story is available to pre-order now and will be released on November 15 in the USA and November 24 in the UK. Read the Blocks review here!
The official synopsis reads:
It’s estimated that each year between eighty and ninety million children around the globe are given a box of LEGO, while up to ten million adults buy sets for themselves. Yet LEGO is much more than a dizzying number of plastic bricks that can be put together and combined in countless ways. LEGO is also a vision of the significance of what play can mean for humanity.
This book tells the extraordinary story 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. The LEGO Story is built on Jens Andersen’s unique access to LEGO’s own archives, as well as on Andersen’s extensive conversations with Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, former president and CEO of the LEGO group and grandson of its founder, Ole Kirk Christiansen.
A riveting cultural history of changing generations’ views of childhood and the importance of play, The LEGO Story also a fascinating case study of how innovation and creativity helped leaders transform LEGO from a small carpentry business into the world’s largest producer of play materials and one of the most beloved brands in the world. Richly illustrated with never-before-seen photos from the family’s private archive, this is the ultimate book for fans of LEGO, revealing everything you ever wanted to know about the brand.