I am so excited to be participating in the Reading Without Walls Tour! This tour is inspired by National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, Gene Luen Yang's platform to encourage children to read books about people or topics they don't know much about. For me it is STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) books.
Today I would like to highlight Gene Luen Yang's newest book in his Secret Coders series. In addition, I will be sharing another STEM book I read called Human Body Theater: A Nonfiction Revue.
by Gene Luen Yang and Mike Holmes
Published August 30, 2016
by First Second
Graphic novels
96 Pages
Goodreads Summary
There's something lurking beneath the surface of Stately Academy—literally. In a secret underground classroom Hopper, Eni, and Josh discover that the campus was once home to the Bee School, an institute where teachers, students, and robots worked together to unravel the mysteries of coding. Hopper and her friends are eager to follow in this tradition and become top-rate coders. But why are Principal Dean and the rugby team suddenly so interested in their extracurricular activities?
From graphic novel superstar (and high school computer programming teacher) Gene Luen Yang comes the second volume of Secret Coders: Paths & Portals, a wildly entertaining new series that combines logic puzzles and basic programming instruction with a page-turning mystery plot!
My Thoughts
I have to admit, I probably would not have picked up this book on my own. Coding is a mysterious and confusing entity to me. It really is a language all its own. Lines, dashes, numbers and a whole lot of symbols can create a program? It boggles the mind. After reading Paths and Portals, coding is still perplexing, but I think I "get it" a little bit more.
Paths and Portals is first, a story of friends (if somewhat reluctant friends) working and learning together. They are working together to learn more about coding with the help of the janitor, who they find out used to be a professor. There are successes and failures as they try, practice, tweak and try again with the army of robotic turtles stored in the depths of the school.
Of course a good story has a protagonist or several in this case. The muscle-headed rugby team steals one of the powerful turtles to give to the evil principal. The story ends with a cliffhanger, leaving the reader excited to read the next book: Secrets and Sequences.
The authors do a nice job showing the process of coding with split panels of code on one side and the actions performed on the other. I know many students will be excited to try coding after reading this book (and series).
I would recommend it for grades 3-6.
Praise for Secret Coders: Paths and Portals
Don't miss the first Secret Coders book!
by Maris Wicks
Published 2015
by First Second
240 Pages
Goodreads Summary
Welcome to the Human Body Theater, where your master of ceremonies is going to lead you through a theatrical revue of each and every biological system of the human body! Starting out as a skeleton, the MC puts on a new layer of her costume (her body) with each "act." By turns goofy and intensely informative, the Human Body Theater is always accessible and always entertaining.
Maris Wicks is a biology nerd, and by the time you've read this book, you will be too! Harnessing her passion for science (and her background as a science educator for elementary and middle-school students), she has created a comics-format introduction to the human body that will make an expert of any reader -- young or old!
My Thoughts
This book is an amazing work of fictional nonfiction. In full color, the host, Skeleton, takes the reader through the body systems in a way that is entertaining, informative and makes sense to young readers. The characters are entertaining and the story has a humorous tone. What a great way to learn about the human body.
For parents and educators: There is a section about the reproductive system with illustrations.
Visit the other stops along the Reading Without Walls Blog Tour!
