Hello Ruby Adventures in Coding

Author: Linda Liukas

ISBN: 978-1-250-06500-1
Publisher: Fiewel and Friends, An Imprint of Macmillan
What we think: this is a story book and an activity book rolled into one. Along with an engaging website:
www.helloruby.com there is limited value in using this book in early primary classes.
The book is meant to be read by a parent and the activities completed as the story progresses. It is not a book to
read and complete the activities in one session. A knowledgeable person needs to develop the scaffolding
between the events of the story, the activities and the coding ideas because the story itself does not make that
clear. As stated on page 70 (the first page of the Activity Book section), These exercises call out ways we can
give exact instructions in our daily lives and help understand the importance of giving commands in the
right order, recognize patterns, and know how to break things down. This information is important when
talking to a computer. The difficulty in using this book comes with connecting a whole class of students to the
content. Would your students understand the concepts of variables and the ideas of strings and Booleans? Or
algorithm and sequence? Loops? If-Then Selection or If-Else Selection? Functions or Abstractions?
While the adventure Ruby takes is the foundation of the activities it doesnt seem to us to be vital. So it it worth
the $19.50 to buy this book? We dont think so. Save your money. We have found activities that are
unplugged from Hour of Code to be useful and they have accompanying videos.
The chapters are:
Chapte Page #s Title Activity Page #s Activity
r
1 6 to 11 Meet Ruby -70 to 73 1-Sequence
2-Decomposition
3-Pattern Recognition
2 12 to 17 The Clues -74 to 77 4-Strings
5-Numbers
6-Booleans
3 18 to 23 Rubys Plan -78 to 81 7-Algorithms
8-Algorithms & Sequence
4 24 to 29 The Penguins -82 to 85 9-Data Structures
10-Data Structures
5 30 to 37 Snow Leopard -86 to 89 11- Pattern Recognition
12-Loops
6 38 to 45 The Garden -90 to 93 13-Selection
14-Selection
7 46 to 51 The Robots -94 to 97 15-Creativity & Technology
16-Creativity & Computational Thinking
8 52 to 57 Django -98 to 101 17-Functions
18-Abstractions
9 58 to 63 The Problem -102 to 105 19-Debugging
20-Debugging
21-Pair Programming
10 64 to 68 Home -106 to 109 22-Bringing It All Together
-110 to 111 Glossary