My granddaughters had no interest in technology, nor exhibited any tendency to want to learn anything about it or computers ... that is, until I read them this book. Actually, I did not finish reading it. They decided they wanted to read it out loud themselves (to each other). Something clicked. The then-8-year-old suddenly wanted to know it all. The then-11-year-old started Googling things about "code." What have I done!? (Oh, well. Maybe lit a fuse that will lead to a career? Although, the older one now talks about going into medicine.)
This is a very cool book. I suggest you read it first for yourself, so that you can prepare to get the "voices" right when you do read it to your young ones. It took a couple or chapters or more before they got into it, but once they did, they did not want to stop. Then they wanted it read over and over.
I wish there were more books about science and technology that was this direct, simple, straightforward, and made the subject approachable. I'm not able to pick out what needs to be said about complex subjects and then say them simply, so this writer has done a particularly admirable job.
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From the Publisher
The Computers in This Book
I feel I should warn you: You won’t find any computers in this book. If the idea of a computer science book without computers upsets you, please close your eyes until you’ve finished reading the rest of this page.
The truth is that computer science isn’t really about the computer. The computer is just a tool to help you see ideas more clearly. You can see the moon and stars without a telescope, smell the flowers without a fluoroscope, have fun without a funoscope, and be silly sans oscilloscope.
You can also play with computer science without you-know-what. Ideas are the real stuff of computer science. This book is about those ideas and how to find them. In fact, most of the characters, places, and thingamajigs in Userland are actually based on those ideas. Check out the Field Guide at the back of the book to learn more about them!
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Reviews with images
Sometimes it's okay to judge a book by its cover.
I got this book as part of humble-bundle package. I am very surprised to find this book as part of the technical books package. This book is clearly aimed at kids. I would describe this book as Algorithms for kids written in vein of Alice in wonderland. My first reaction to reading couple of pages in this book was that this was children's book version of Charles Petzold's Code but written in a more convoluted way.OVERVIEW:The book revolves around a girl name Lauren who gets lost in an weird world known as Userland. There she finds several confusing but amusing characters and creatures such as Travelling salesman, jargons, Xor lizard, Achilles and the Tortoise. Lauren solves various puzzles and helps people while on the quest to get back home.The book has 21 chapters mostly about Lauren ending up in a new place and a having small adventure in that place. The adventure usually revolves around having her solving a puzzle of some sort which is usually related around a familiar problem in Computer science but is tried to be presented in a more fun way e.g. the readers-writers problem is presented as group of people trying to read and write into a book at the same time. At the end there is a field guide which explains the concepts that the author had introduced in the chapters.Sometime the examples might too convoluted for children to understand like the example of explaining the concept of infinite with the Dichotomy paradox.OVERALL IMPRESSION OF THE BOOKThis book is quick and easy read. Clearly with the content and the artwork this is aimed at kids. If you are a computer science graduate then this book would be of very limited use for you.As far as introducing kids to the fascinating world of computers is concerned, I personally think that there are far better ways of achieving that such as arduino, Scratch, HTML/JS, Lego mindstorms. Showing them things that work (such as turning on a led, controlling a robot) might be better way to get those little gears moving instead of introducing them with algorithmic concepts of computer science in a vague manner.
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Top reviews from other countries
Monika
Brilliant book. My 8 years old boy loves it.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 17, 2021KG
Get your kids into coding - a good book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 26, 2016