SAMA CRUSHES THE CODE

In a clever combination of fiction and outright coding instruction with inset vocabulary and snatches of actual samples, high schooler and tech entrepreneur Mehta and co-author Stevens pitch fretful Sama into middle school. There, while forming new friendships and seeing old ones change, Sama also struggles for acceptance in Tech Club after finding herself odd girl out. But after she maps a quicker route for her beleaguered school bus driver, she figures out a way to optimize bus routes for her whole district and town and even pitches in to improve an underwhelming amusement park ride. Along the way, she and readers painlessly absorb coding techniques (the creation of stacks and arrays) and learn definitions of, for instance, “conditional statements” and “functions.” By the end, Sama has not only invented an instructional board game (with a name similar to one that Mehta herself peddles), but also earned her way back into the Tech Club. Joining a racially diverse student body in Alvarado’s cleanly drawn panels, this brown-skinned go-getter displays lively intelligence, a vivid personality, and strong emotions.