November 27, 2017
In this sweet and informative tale, Lucy joins the middle school coding club and is assigned to a group with three other girls she barely knows. The girls work together and form a bond of friendship while deciphering coded messages and, in the process, learning about inputs and outputs and how to create conditional, looping, and variable clauses. Classically trained voice artist Johnson expertly creates authentic and consistent voices for Sophia, Maya, and Erin, as well as Lucy’s older brother and the girls’ caring and knowledgeable teacher. Though it becomes a bit tedious and pulls the listener away from the story line, Johnson accurately reads all four coded messages with each open and closed parentheses, underscore, curly bracket, and semicolon. This audiobook, first in a series, succeeds in presenting a story that will encourage young children to become interested in computer programming. Ages 8–12. A Penguin Workbook hardcover.