Disney Hyperion
September 07, 2017
208 pages
add to Goodreads/buy from Book Depository/or Amazon
Allie Navarro can't wait to show her best friends the app she built at CodeGirls summer camp. CLICK'D pairs users based on common interests and sends them on a fun (and occasionally rule-breaking) scavenger hunt to find each other. And it's a hit. By the second day of school, everyone is talking about CLICK'D.
Watching her app go viral is amazing. Leaderboards are filling up! Everyone's making new friends. And with all the data Allie is collecting, she has an even better shot at beating her archenemy, Nathan, at the upcoming youth coding competition. But when Allie discovers a glitch that threatens to expose everyone's secrets, she has to figure out how to make things right, even if that means sharing the computer lab with Nathan. Can Allie fix her app, stop it from doing any more damage, and win back the friends it hurt-all before she steps on stage to present CLICK'D to the judges?
New York Times best-selling author Tamara Ireland Stone combines friendship, coding, and lots of popcorn in her fun and empowering middle-grade debut.
Click'd was such a fun but also heartfelt middle-grade novel. There is a great portrayal of Allie, a girl who loves her friends and their soccer tournaments but is willing to leave a summer of that behind to attend her 'computer camp.' CodeGirls is even more than she had hoped it would be and she comes away from it not only with new friends, but also a great game: CLICK'D.
I loved that Allie loved coding and wasn't afraid to express that fact. It was something she enjoyed and, even if her school friends didn't understand it, she wasn't going to dial back her enthusiasm or pretend. For a seventh grader, really embracing something different that you like could be heard but she really was herself.
Allie's reaction to finding the glitch in CLICK'D was realistic but also made for a good story. The choices she made were understandable and, as a reader, you can agree with her or not, but see why doe did it.
I appreciated that Click'd was not full of quick fixes or instantly corrected wrongs. Both with relationships and when it came to the coding, solutions had to be figured out, tested and attempted. Sometimes they were the right and things were fixed. Sometimes it was more complicated. They was that the error in the coding might bring about a problem between people was smart and well done. All of the coding, the talk around the glitch, and how things work, etc was done well and used enough terms but without being overwhelming or losing readers who don't know code.
Click'd is a great middle grade debut from Tamara Ireland Stone with a great depiction of a girl who unabashedly loves coding - and is good at it. The author does a great job having the characters and their relationships and growth happen around and because of CLICK'D and its coding.
digital review copy received, from NetGalley, via publisher
No comments:
Post a Comment