Disney Villains: The Essential Guide (DK Essential Guides) [Hardcover]

Glenn Dakin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 6, 2004 | Age Level: 1 and up | Series: DK Essential Guides

From Captain Hook to Cruela De Vil, Disney Villains: The Essential Guide offers an insider's look at the most wicked villains in Disney history. Reflecting on the themes of adventure and suspense in both classic and new Disney films, this unique reference is packed with colorful illustrations, annotated drawings, and lively text about the villains everyone loves to hate.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 1 and up
  
• Hardcover: 48 pages
• Publisher: DK CHILDREN (September 6, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0756605806
• ISBN-13: 978-0756605803
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.7 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #593,365 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Yes, Essential, But Lacking Coverage on a Couple Favorites, January 21, 2005

By 

George Buttner "Agent0042" (Dayton, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Disney Villains: The Essential Guide (DK Essential Guides) (Hardcover)

"Disney Villains: The Essential Guide" is just that, a well-illustrated, detailed guide to most of your favorite Disney villains. From Captain Hook to Maleficent, they're here, including even some info on Disney-Pixar villains. Each of the featured villains gets a detailed description, blurbs all around them for description and information in three important areas: Meanest Moment, Achille's Heel and Pet Peeve. Each also gets a couple of pages devoted to things such as their lair and their dastardly deeds, and you'll even get detailed looks at locations such as Never Land and Pride Rock. This is a feast of information that parents can enjoy reading and looking over with their kids, or can just read on their own.

The main problem with this guide is that it only gives limited coverage on a couple of pages to certain villains, including two of the very best Disney villains: Jafar from "Aladdin" and Hades from "Hercules." Perhaps someday we'll see a Volume II with more info, but until then, these villainous greats are relegated to small, portion-of-a-page blurbs.

If you're a fan of Disney movies, or just wanna learn more about these dastardly villains, definitely get this! I've seen most of the Disney movies, watched the DVDs and read a lot on the Internet (and another unofficial book about the Disney villains) and I still learned a lot from this.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Have for "Bad Guy Obsessed" Kids, August 10, 2008

By 

JC - See all my reviews

This review is from: Disney Villains: The Essential Guide (DK Essential Guides) (Hardcover)

My 4 year old son is literally obsessed with Bad Guys, esp the Disney ones, and LOVES this book. The pictures are great, and there are lots of little side stories about each villian. We read it every night!

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Rather dull, and certainly not essential..., May 2, 2010

By 

Taran Wanderer (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Disney Villains: The Essential Guide (DK Essential Guides) (Hardcover)

"Disney Villains: The Essential Guide" by Glenn Dakin is not a very exciting book; it is neither educational (as far as film knowledge goes) nor that much fun. Its biggest flaw is that it has a very limited coverage regarding classic Disney villains; some are described and analyzed through a span of three full pages, others are barely listed, while some are not even mentioned or featured at all.

The information regarding the featured villains is presented with a touch of humor and irony that somehow dies halfway through the book. Some of the claims are rather poor attempts at humor. For instance, Maleficent's description of the three good fairies in Sleeping Beauty (1959) left me saying "okay, then." and almost had me roll my eyes. The suggestion that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)'s Queen Grimhilde (who is never referred to as anything but the "Evil Queen" suggesting a lack of research on the author's part) is actually an old hag made beautiful by the abuse of make-up is rather dumb. The book doesn't glorify the villains in any sense, neither in terms of stile or wit. I disagree that all readers (or viewers) of these films would quickly side along the heroes, when in a story like Peter Pan (1953), I found the villains far more exciting and likeable than its arrogant, smart-mouthed hero. Irony and sometimes half-baked or cheap humor makes up the first half of the book; the second half only makes references to different scenes in the variety of films from which these villains come. Some of the images included in the book come directly from the films themselves, a very low-quality VHS-like print of the films, that is. It would have been nice to see sharper images, considering this book was released well into the digital video era.

What is unforgivable is the fact that the book would include non-villain characters such as Finding Nemo's Bruce the shark, and completely neglect some of the classic villains, whose evil schemes were far more wicked and memorable. I'm talking about classic characters such as Dumbo (1941)'s ringmaster, the Queen of Heart from Alice in Wonderland (1951), the cruel and black-hearted Madame Medusa from The Rescuers (1977), the hilariously evil Mad Madame Mim from The Sword in the Stone (1963), or even the frightening Horned King from the notorious The Black Cauldron (1985). Any of these villains would have no doubt been more fun to read about than the likes of Randall, Scroop or Emperor Zurg... heck, even Maleficent! How much can you say about a wicked fairy who wants nothing but to kill over not being imvited to a celebration, and is finally defeated by sword resembling a tooth pick even after turning into a fearsome dragon? Well, in any case, despite her incompetence, Maleficent is a pretty classy villain.

All in all, this book is no better than one of Disney's direct-to-video sequels. It shamelessly tries to cash into the success of these popular Walt Disney animated films, offering in return little entertainment or educational values. It's a nice book to check out of your public library, but I wouldn't spend more than a dollar on it.