Get Coding – book review
“Code your own website, app and game and develop real coding skills in this fun guide to coding for beginners”
Get Coding – from Walker Books
This is firstly a gorgeous book!
From cover to cover it is beautifully designed, illustrated and written. The type of book even an enthusiast child won’t want to bend the spine of any more than is necessary.
This is one of a number of books I’ve picked up recently that are aimed at children interested in learning to code.
What I find fascinating about how advanced we now are in computer science education is that the topics covered in the book (aimed at children 9+) are topics I wasn’t myself introduced to in a classroom until I studied my GCSEs!
Perhaps this is the genius of the book, it takes content like html and JavaScript (which might once have been seen as too technical to try until you reached your teens) and makes it easily accessible to younger learners and in an engaging way!
What’s the hook?
The hook of the book is its use of a story and challenges based on said story as the basis to coding projects the reader will attempt. In this case the reader works on six exciting missions for Dr Day an a Professor Bairstone after the discover of the long-lost Monk Diamond.
The missions are interesting, engaging and mapped out with beautiful with text and easy to follow graphics. (See gallery at bottom of post) The missions also come with an accompanying website full of useful downloads to support you as work through the missions! (visit here)
Buy it?
Short answer…yes!
As a teacher I wish I could afford to buy it for all my students and have them follow the book over a term for two!
If you’re a parent with the kind of child that’s into creative things like coding then this might need to go on your last-minute Christmas list!
If you’re a teacher in need of some inspiration covering things like html and JavaScript in classes then I wholeheartedly recommend you get a copy of this book and spend some time reading and working through the activities – it will inspire you!
