Sunday, October 7, 2018

How to Code a Sandcastle by Josh Funk - ESSENTIAL

How to Code a Sandcastle by Josh Funk, illustrated bySara Palacios. PICTURE BOOK. Viking, 2018. $17. 9780425291986

BUYING ADVISORY: EL (K-3) – ESSENTIAL 

AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE

After introducing herself to the world, Pearl announces that today is the last day she can build a sandcastle. Previous attempts have failed, but today she has brought Pascal, her robot, to help. Pascal will do anything she tells him, as long as she tells him in code. She then proceeds to break down the instruction to “build a sandcastle” into smaller, doable steps. By the end, she has used a code-following robot to build an entire kingdom.

This book introduces some basics of coding through an activity that kids can relate to. Various coding conventions are introduced, such as breaking a big task into smaller steps, looping, sequencing, if-then-else clauses, and reusing the same code again and again. With the current emphasis on coding instruction, this book is essential to support such curriculum.
P. K. Foster, teacher-librarian

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