How to Code a Sandcastle (Josh Funk)

This. Book. Is. Genius.

I heard so much about Josh Funk's new picture book through the #kidlit community and I have to be honest I was a bit skeptical. How well could someone boil down coding enough to turn the concept into a children's book. I figured it there was a high chance it would be boring for children or on the flip side, not actually incorporate code.

I was so so so wrong. Funk managed to not only introduce meaningful terms and functions of code, but also created a character and story that truly engages the reader, young or old!

Pearl just wants to build a sand castle before the summer ends, but something always goes wrong. In a last attempt, she recruits the help of her robot friend and together they use code!

The book does a great job of breaking past sand castles problems into small steps to solve. Concepts like sequence, loop, and if-then-else, are worked into the story and a clear example is given to each.

The concepts were a little advanced for my almost-4-year-old NK, but it did strike up a conversation about what coding is and the illustrations and story made him want to read it again as soon as we finished.

This made the #STEM Teacher side of me beyond happy and the Picture Book Writer side of me beyond impressed. GO JOSH FUNK!