In the Key of Code

Aimee Lucido

$16.99

Paperback

In stock
Ready to ship

QTY:

Walker Books
01 March 2020

Children's & Educational; General fiction (Children's&YA); Family & home stories (Children's&YA); School stories (Children's&YA); Science & technology: general interest (Children's&YA)

An original, inventive and heart-warming novel from an exciting debut author about a lonely new girl and an unlikely friendship formed in a school code club that will appeal to fans of Sarah Crossan.

When twelve-year-old Emmy's musical family moves to California so her dad can take a job with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Emmy has never felt more out of tune. But when she ends up in a school computer science club, she finds that she can understand code through a language she is familiar with: music. Slowly, Emmy makes friends with Abigail and the two girls start to discover their voices through the programming language of Java.

Extraordinarily crafted, the novel begins to incorporate Java's syntax and concepts as Emmy, and ultimately the reader, learns to think in code. By the end, Emmy doesn't feel like a wrong note, but like a musician in the world's most beautiful symphony.

By: Aimee Lucido
Imprint: Walker Books
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 287g
ISBN: 9781406389333
ISBN 10: 1406389331
Pages: 416
Publication Date: 01 March 2020
Recommended Age: From 10 to 14 years
Audience: Children/juvenile , English as a second language
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Aimee Lucido is a software engineer by day, writer by night. She did her undergrad degree in computer science at Brown and her MFA in writing for children and young adults at Hamline University. She spends her nine-to-five working at Uber on the Android rider-to-driver team (splitting her time between software engineering and being a diversity & inclusion advocate), and her five-to-nine pursuing her dream of being a writer. In her free time she writes crossword puzzles and performs musical improv with her team Flash Mob Musical. She lives in San Francisco.

Reviews for In the Key of Code

In the US, more open-ended, hip-hop-inspired novels in verse have been in circulation for some time. In the Key of Code (Walker) is a highlight in that relatively recent tradition. Aimee Lucido's debut is told in the form of poems, liberally littered with computer code and musical terminology. It is a daring exercise in form that carries its story very well. New girl Emmy, 12, is the unmusical child of musicians, and starting school in San Francisco. As she navigates the mean-girl social codes and a tense home life, coding club becomes an unlikely sanctuary. But her new friendship with Abigail is fraught with tension, and their amazing computer science teacher Ms Delaney is more often absent than not. You might not have thought that the words PUB-lic STAT-ic voidmain string BRACK-et BRACK-et ARGS could bring a computer layperson to tears, but they did, as this uncommon book reached its crescendo. -- Kitty Empire * the guardian *