Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding

I wasn't involved in the Kickstarter, so I can't comment on any of the pricing issues, but I can comment on what the book has meant to me.No, your child is not going to "know how to code" after reading this book. This is not textbook by any means. This book teaches programming CONCEPTS, stuff helpful to understand before approaching actual syntax and advanced concepts. This is for FOUR to EIGHT year olds, so unless your kid is a child prodigy this is perfect. I love that it explains things in simple, fun ways for my two girls. This will help them with critical thinking and problem-solving skills while their brains are barely beginning to be capable of abstract thought. This book will lay the groundwork for them, and then when the time comes for tech-oriented courses they will feel completely comfortable.I want my daughters to know that they are capable of anything, not just "girly" careers. Books like these are invaluable in changing the lopsided tech field.

First off, I bought this book because I am a first grade teacher at a STEM school, and I teach the afterschool robotics club for K-1 using bee-bots. And I love teaching Science!I love this book! I think it does a great job of introducing ideas of coding to children. I can see the links they are going to make between using bee-bots, or learning about the engineer design process. I also love that it includes the idea that one solution to one problem won't always work for another problem - and they may have to reevaluate and find a new/better/different solution. If you know a lot about coding, and programming, I can see how your conversations and questions could make this book very beneficial for children and help them make those connections into coding. I also loved the sneaky hints they put throughout the book to android, apple, firefox, etc. However, if you expect to just hand this book to your kid and have learn about coding you will be very disappointed.

I'm a second grade teacher and I've been teaching my kids coding this year. I ordered this book because it looked interesting and after quickly glancing through it and checking out the website that goes along with it, I am 100% happy! In fact, I am so excited to use it that I forwarded it to many of my colleagues and even bought another copy for some of my friends with young kids. This is a one of a kind find! I highly recommend it for any primary teachers, or parents wanting to introduce their kids to some of the basic concepts behind successful coding.In relation to other reviews, the book is not supposed to teach specific coding language or direct concepts. Also, you can easily download all the workbook pages (for FREE on the helloruby website).

Hello Ruby is an interesting hybrid of chapter book and activity book. Oddly, though, the activities are included in the back half of the book and not in or at the end of each chapter. The introduction also says that the book is designed for a parent to read the story to their child(ren) and work through the activities together.The story is cute and simple with a pretty easy reading level (with some help a second grader could manage), however it jumps from something realistic into what I think is Ruby’s imagination. Ruby’s dad has hidden gems and left her some cryptic messages as clues to finding them. I was a little confused as to how Ruby managed to create a map for a world that I thought was supposed to be around her house, but ended up with a river and a forest. I stuck with it and the story eventually made more sense, it just required accepting that this was not our world. I’m not sure kids will be thrown by the leap into Ruby’s imagination since they are less familiar with genres and rules about worlds and stories. Some of the chapters were a little confusing unless you looked at and did the activities with them.I did appreciate that the activities built on each other, getting more difficult as the book went on. One helps kids understand Booleans which I might have to use in the library when we talk about them.Considering it needs a parent to go through it with the child (not a bad thing! I wish more parents of older kids were still reading and working with their kids), it’s probably not the kind of book that would be popular in my library. It should work for a public library or a home collection if coding is popular. What I think I might do is buy it to have in the makerspace I run.

Adventures in Coding Early Concepts might have been a clearer title. It is for younger learners and touches briefly on the ideas *behind* coding rather than teach you how to code something by the end of the book. I think some of the negative reviews are because this is not made so clear in the item description/title.For my 6 year old daughter (and her IT geek Daddy), this book is so much fun. In each short chapter, a few simple concepts are woven into the story & then there are fun activities in the back of the book that build on that concept (and I think more on the authors blog).So no, you would not have a child who can sit down and program something from scratch by the end of this book, but YES you would have a younger child who has been exposed to some of the logic etc skills to code someday....and had fun in the process.I think this book is an asset to our homeschool.

As a long term sub in a computer class, I was looking for a tool to help me teach the students about computers without just turning them loose on educational computer games. I bought this book to read to elementary students (KG - 3). This is probably the best book I could have found for them. I have the ability to teach simple coding concepts by first reading the story, then using the great unplugged ideas at the back of the book. As I read the story, I used the white board for a visual for the students. They loved pretending to be Ruby and going on her adventure.