How to Code a Sandcastle
by Josh Funk
illustrated by Sara Palacios
New York, New York : Viking, 2018. ©2018
Pearl is a young girl struggling to build a sandcastle before it gets knocked down. She decides to have a robot build the sandcastle for her, but quickly finds that she has to give him very specific instructions, otherwise things get out of hand. She gives him the instructions in code, walking though each step on how to set up a basic code with a loop, a sequence, and an if-then-else command. She works through her errors, and by the end of the book Pearl and her robot have built a sandcastle kingdom.
This book is a simple introduction to what coding is and how it works. Sponsored by the Girls Who Code organization, it teaches basic coding instructions like 'sequence' and 'loop' in a way that makes sense for kids new to the language of coding. It also showcases how coding isn't a foolproof method, and shows Pearl working out the problems her code creates. The helpful instructions in the back of book explain the concepts of sequence, loops, and if-then-else in a way that kids can easily understand.
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