Lucy can't wait for the new coding club at school to start. Even though she's only in sixth grade, she has an idea for an app, and is excited to get started on it. But Lucy's excitement turns to disappointment when she shows up at the first meeting. Sophia is there--she and Lucy had a fight over the summer and they are now ex-friends. There's also Maya--a very cool seventh grader who Lucy's never dared talk to. And then there's Erin--a new girl who nobody really knows. Not only does Lucy not get to work on her brilliant idea for an app, she also ends up working with Sophia, Maya, and Erin to discover the meaning of some mysterious notes that are in coding language. Lucy and the rest of the girls soon discover that coding takes time, patience, and dedication--and so does friendship.
Although I've wanted to learn computer programming for a while, the few times I've tried I've given up, finding it too technical to focus or wrap my head around. I figured children or middle grade books would be the perfect way to have it explained plainly. So when I heard about the Girls Who Code movement and the creation of this book series I was very excited to get a hold of them.
The book explains in a very straightforward manner commonly used coding terms and then follows up by giving examples and scenarios of how they would be used. Equivalating the terms to real life examples made it easy for me to follow along and actually wrap my head around it. The plot line focuses around four girls who become friends as they start to solve mysterious notes with coding problems. The mystery of who leaves the notes was fairly obvious but that's fairly typical of a middle grade novel. Overall a fun little read.
