Now that the Cybils results are out, I can finally post reviews of my Cybils reads! As you may have read earlier, my bookish year started off with round 2 judging of the Cybils (the Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards), where I was in the panel for Graphic Novels.
It’s not easy finding the finalist titles here in Manila (I think only three are available in local bookstores, this being one of them) but luckily some publishers have transmitted evaluation copies electronically and there were some books dispatched in the mail so that made it easier for me.
Anyway, as I’m writing a whole bunch of reviews, let me start off with Secret Coders by Gene Luen Yang (recently named by the US Library of Congress as a National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature) and Mike Holmes.
In Secret Coders, Hopper has just transferred to Stately Academy, which she finds downright creepy. The building looks like a haunted house, and there were strange characters lurking about — the janitor, the principal, even the birds! Hopper soon befriends another student named Eni, and together they uncover the secrets of Stately Academy.
Hopper is a middle grader going through a tough time fitting in in her new school (among other things), and easily wins over the reader’s sympathy in the first few pages. She can be quite mouthy (the backtalk is a bit much, at times), but she’s also smart and feisty and brave. Eni is a boy of few words, and is more cautious about breaking school rules, but when he and Hopper stumble over the key to the school mystery, Hopper’s adventurous spirit soon wins him over and they find out there’s more to Stately Academy than they bargained for.
This first installment of Secret Coders is a quick and entertaining read, introducing programming language by way of puzzles. I couldn’t resist doing them, myself.
Coming from the 90’s generation that grew up transitioning from DOS to Windows, I was thoroughly amused that a large part of this book revolved around Logo, transporting me back to fifth grade computer class, when we spent hours playing with the turtle on Logo. The book introduces an actual robot turtle called Little Guy, who moves according to commands in Logo code.
Aside from the interactivity of this book, I really enjoyed the visuals — the visual narrative is solid, with good pacing and plenty of action, a nice amount of detail, and comic appeal that will surely go over well with the young audience. The green and black color scheme is clearly a nod to the monitor screens of old, and there’s some amazingly effective illustrations of binary code and the functions of Logo programming.
That said, I am not actually sure how this book translates to a younger reader. Its target audience was born in the age of colored (and likely flat screen) monitors, and do they even learn about Logo these days? While I definitely give the book props for interactivity, I wish the story incorporated a little more information on the significance of the binary code and programming language, just to ensure the references aren’t lost on the reader.
Perhaps this will be addressed in succeeding installments, or perhaps this series will inspire its readers to look up more information on their own, starting with the Secret Coders website which has downloadable activities, and a very helpful video that is a basic lesson in Logo programming.
Logo rocks.
***
Secret Coders, paperback, 4/5 stars