Secret Coders
Secret Coders by Gene Luen Yang and Mike Holmes is about a girl name Hopper, how she is new to school, and has troubling fitting in. Hopper then finds out there is something weird about the school and with the help of a character name Eni they try to get to the bottom of it. The characters use binary decoding to solve the questions they face. The authors do a good job at interacting with the reader, teaching us about binary code, and wanting us to do a little decoding ourselves. They make computer science simple, and fun for young readers. This is a good thing because it can inspire them to learn more about computer science.
Even though the book is about how the characters use coding the authors also have some other themes. One theme they touch on is gender. The main character Hopper is a girl and not only do they have her using computer science the authors also make her out to be a tomboy. Having a character like this is breaking gender roles and showing girl readers that there is no guy only sport or subjects like computer science.
Another thing the authors show us is the troubles students go through. The character Hopper is a new student and is going through a lot in her personal life. As a future teacher this book showed me that any of my students can be like Hopper dealing with their parents’ divorce and how drastically that can change their life. We as future teachers need to realize that students have a lot going on in their personal life and how that can affect them in the classroom. We need to be that support system for our students and understand their struggles, so that we are better fit to teach them and have them succeed.
- Monica. S
Yang, Gene Luen, and Mike Holmes. Secret coders. NY, NY, First Second, an imprint of Roaring Brook Press, 2015.
