by Gene Luen Yang & Mike Holmes
2015-2018 / 92-110 pages each x 6 volumes
Rating: Good/GREAT/Gift

Hopper is at a new school and gets off to a rocky start: her classes are boring, the other students are ignoring her, and when she does get their attention, it almost results in a fight. During lunch period she ends up sitting alone… until a bird comes fluttering down to sit in front of her. A feathered friend is better than no friend at all, right? That’s what Hopper figures, at least until it blinks one of its four eyes!

Turns out the bird is robot, and it’s blinking in binary. Another student, Eni, spots the odd bird and gives Hopper, and us, a lesson in how binary works. Then the two of them discover a turtle robot designed to aid the janitor, that seems programmable, if only you know how. The janitor turns out to be a super genius, and there is a whole secret subterranean system underneath the school, but accessible only to those who know how to program the turtle.

That gets us to the goal of this book. This is a series that my kids read, just for fun, but it’s actually educational fiction – the authors’ goal is to teach kids some of the basic logic that’s involved in computer programming. And as Hopper and Eni  get better at coding simple computer programs to make the turtle robot move and work, readers are learning too.

Cautions

In the first book we learn that the teacher that Hopper has the biggest difficulty with – and speaks disrespectfully to – is actually her mom. We also find out that Hopper’s mom and dad had a big fight six months ago, her dad left, and they haven’t seen him since. It seems like he walked out on his family, though we later learn that he was kidnapped and has been stuck in a two-dimensional system since then. Thankfully Hopper does realize she needs to apologize to her mom. But her initial rudeness, and a few conversations between Hopper and her mom about whose fault it is that dad is gone, mean this isn’t one for under 12s.

Language concerns would be limited to a few jerk-faces, a gosh and a geez.

Conclusion

There are points at which the story is sacrificed for the sake of the education – each time Eni and Hopper program a turtle we all have to think through it slowly and carefully. But a nefarious principal, his rugby team henchmen, a green-skinned villain and his army of toothy robot ducks, and a budding romance between Hopper and Eni, keep things interesting.

The math and logic involved in programming mean this will be a bit much for kids under 12. They might still read it just for the story, but to read these for the fun and skip over the education is to miss the point of the series. Any teen with a bent towards math and logic will find these an entertaining introduction to some basic computer code thinking.