Definitely not a stand-alone -- these books are in sequence. Still, an enjoyable way to learn the basics of coding, and a gradually unfolding story. ( )

reviewed by egalley (thanks to Netgalley).

children's graphic novel series that teaches computer science, with everyday diversity (can be used in conjunction with www.secret-coders.com). I missed the first book, so the bits of code and all the robot turtles caught me by surprise, but I appreciate the effort to get more kids interested in coding. I'm not sure how successful it will be--I feel like I'd have trouble selling this book outside of a coding club (and even within a kids coding club, where mostly we do block coding with scratch rather than writing actual bits of code). But the hope is totally there; the authors are both highly esteemed and I am definitely a supporter of the cause (more kids and diverse kids gaining an interest in CS so that they can compete with foreigners in the job market).
The premise is somewhat weak (sort of like really improbable word problems in math class) but it explains concepts one at a time [parameters! ifelse!] as the kids find themselves in various "teachable moments," and also gives readers a chance to practice what they've learned between chapters. A note on the everyday diversity component: the lead character, Hopper is a girl from a family of mixed-ethnicity (from which her father is absent because an evil guy kidnapped him years ago); her 2 sidekicks are boys from ethnically diverse backgrounds (African-American Eni comes from a family that is really good at basketball but apparently he discovers in the first book that he's also really good at coding). These appear to be relatively privileged kids with supportive families, but that's probably a pretty realistic audience for this material anyway. ( )

Continues more of the first with decent character development and simple programming puzzles. ( )

- "So, how many turtles should we put in this book?"
- "Yes."

This book is about a secret underground class,3 kids find out the class was where teachers, students, and 𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘴 work together to learn coding! (very anticlimactic story idea, but they made it work). Though the book seems to have some weird obsession with robo-turtles, I think its a fun story and you learn a bit of coding along the way. The authors are also people I recognize from other series, Gene Yang wrote Avatar: The Last Airbender and Mike Holmes drew covers for Adventure Time. The artstyle is very good and I like how it is all black and white apart from the green highlights. I was entertained during the whole story. ( )

The first volume had novelty going for it: a graphic novel that teaches basic computer programming. Fun! This volume is simply more of the same with little progress in the overall story. It's still good, just a little frustrating. ( )