Vader's Little Princess HC
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Release Date: May 4, 2013
Price: $14.95
Creator: Jeffrey Brown
Format: 64 pgs., Full Color, 6.5" x 6.5", Hardcover
ISBN: 9-781-4521-1869-7
Age Rating: All Ages
ICv2 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

A follow up to the 2012 YALSA Quick Pick and New York Times bestselling selection for Father's Day gifts Darth Vader and Son, Vader's Little Princess finds cartoonist Jeffrey Brown returning to the Star Wars saga to explore the dynamics of fatherhood further as he satirizes a galaxy far, far way.  Yet, the result is a highly gendered account that does not often succeed as well as its predecessor.

As with Darth Vader and Son, throughout Vader's Little Princess audiences will find humor not only in the adaptations of classic Star Wars sequences and famous quotations, but also in the sensitive, personal moments where the joys and frustrations of fatherhood collide with the sheer absurdity of the situation.  While not every joke works, Darth Vader and Son triumphs in large part because Brown does not simply lift segments of the trilogy and awkwardly force Luke and Vader into them.  Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Vader's Little Princess.

There is an honest and sincere silliness about Darth Vader and Son that does not carry through in Vader's Little Princess.  Moments such as Vader and Luke playing baseball, drinking in Mos Eisley, having breakfast or riding a bicycle, or Luke asking his father "where do babies come from" all stand out as more than basic parodies of Star Wars.  Instead, they are original creations by Brown that utilize such iconic and memorable characters.  And, although Vader's Little Princess possesses similar aspects--Vader reprimanding his children in the pool or instructing Leia to brush her teeth, Leia making a helmet cozy for Vader or writing a school paper on what her father does for a living, or Vader as the extremely over-protective father--most of the book relies too heavily upon taking sequences from the films and trying to manipulate them into scenes of father-daughter relationship building.

There is, admittedly, a certain delight Star Wars fans will discover when witnessing Leia embarrass Vader as he readies to force choke an admiral aboard a star destroyer.  Yet, even these are few and far between.  More troublesome, however, are the gendered portrayals of Leia and her encounters with Vader, and how these mix with the cinematic adaptations.  Although there is nothing inherently gendered about the father-son interactions in Darth Vader and Son that stand out as essentially masculine (the baseball sequence can be argued as a traditional father-son activity), Vader's Little Princess is rife with bizarre and weird moments that disconnect the sequential Leia from the cinematic one.  In other words, there is nothing in the book that hints at the brave, resourceful, and appealing warrior leader that Leia represents and embodies in the movie versions.  Instead, the book contains scenes in which Leia is more concerned talking on her cell phone than leading the Rebel Alliance; painting her toenails, wearing lipstick, and obsessing over her wardrobe than listening to her father's military assessment; engaging in typical teenage solipsism; being relegated to washing dishes and doing laundry; fretting over teenage romance; waiting for her father to rescue her from the clutches of Jabba the Hutt rather than relying on her own strength and ingenuity.  These scenarios might be more forgivable if like in Vader and Son, Leia was continuously portrayed as a small child.  The fact that she evolves into young adulthood makes her character less charming and precocious, and more annoying and petulant.  In short, the book awkwardly tries to impose a traditional, patriarchal father-daughter relationship that ultimately minimizes Leia's strengths and appeal as a character so evident in the films.

--Nathan Wilson, Ph.D. and Freelance Writer in Tulsa, OK.