by Sue Heavenrich
by Josh Funk; illus. by Sara Palacios
44 pages; ages 4-8
Viking, 2018
If you know how to code, you can do anything: solve big problems, design a car, print a prosthetic hand - even build a sandcastle! Which is good news for Pearl, when she heads to the beach with her robot buddy, Pascal.
All Pearl needs to do is learn how to tell Pascal what to do, and how to do it. As she learns, when telling a robot (or computer) to do something, you need to give it specific instructions. In a sequence. And if you want it to continue doing something over and over and over again, you might want to know how to create a loop of instructions.
So how did the Josh Funk, author of Dear Dragon and Lady Pancake & Sir French Toast, end up writing about coding?
GROG: Hey, Josh! How did you come up
with this fun and sandy idea?
JOSH: Thanks so much for having
me on the GROG! I’ve been following since the very beginning!
A few years back, I
started trying to write a fictional story that also relayed some elements of
coding that was appropriate for the picture book-aged audience. And let me tell
you … it was NOT easy. I went through three and a half completely different
stories before landing on How to Code a Sandcastle.
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| Photo by Carter Hasegawa |
When we submitted the story to my editor at Viking/Penguin (she
previously edited Dear Dragon), she told us that Penguin and Girls Who Code had
recently entered into a partnership to create a bunch of children’s books about
coding. My editor had showed the story to Reshma and Girls Who Code and it all
came together at that point.
GROG: How did you
determine what coding terms / instructions to focus on?
JOSH: At first, I thought back to my first computer science course in
college. Second, I have kids who have been taught certain aspects of coding
since kindergarten, so I’ve seen what they do. And third, I did research.
(Shocking! I know!)
And you know what, coding is just like any other subject. You
need to know the alphabet before you can read. You need to know how to count
and some basic arithmetic symbols before you can do math. And to code, you need
to know about sequences, loops, and conditionals (I call them ‘If-Then-Else’s
in the book). You might call a ‘loop’ a ‘repeat’, but every coding language has
something like that.
It turns out that sequences, loops, and conditionals are the first
things the Girls Who Code movement introduces in their coding program as well.
GROG: Can you talk about
the process of developing a story around showing young readers what these
instructions mean and how they are used?
JOSH: This was the trickiest part. But I think things started to click
when I realized two things:
First, the setting had to be something familiar to children.
Starting out in a made-up fantasy world is complex enough without introducing
complicated coding concepts (trust me, I tried). So when I simplified it to the
task of building a sandcastle at the beach, this was key. (thank you to my
critique partners who continually pushed me in this direction)
Second, I needed to not
try teaching everything in a single
story. There’s a LOT more coding than just sequences, loops, and conditionals.
But when I also tried talking about variables, for loops vs. while loops, and
pointers - that was just WAY too much (but YAY for sequels - HOW TO CODE A
ROLLERCOASTER is where we learn about variables - in the fall of 2019).
GROG: Pearl tells Pascal "that's enough" - is there a way to code when to stop?
JOSH: Depending on the computer
language, there are certainly ways to break out of loops. In fact, in C/C++,
you would use the word break - which
is why Pearl tells Pascal, ‘time for a break’
to get out of that first loop halfway through the book.
Normally, the best way to
get out of a loop is to set the start and end conditions appropriately (for
example, you’ll repeat something a certain number of times or while a certain
condition is still true) - but that might have gotten a little too complicated
for a book like this.
GROG: Aren't you worried Pascal will get sand in his
bearings?
JOSH: And this is why I don’t write strict nonfiction. HOW TO CODE A
SANDCASTLE is ‘informational’ fiction. Some might even say ‘speculative’ - as
we don’t yet live in a world where we can instruct robots to build our
sandcastles for us … at least that I know of ….
To find out more about Josh Funk and his wonderful books visit him at www.joshfunkbooks.com and on Twitter at @joshfunkbooks. Turns out, Josh knows how to code - he studied computer science. He's pretty good at writing instructions for computers, but not so good at writing bios, so please
help him out:
Josh enjoys _______ during ________ and has always
loved __________. He has played ____________ since age __ and his biggest fear
in life is being eaten by a __________.
