The review is published!
Last year, one group of my students explored coding for their science fair project. I have never seen a group more engaged! Yes, they performed well at the regional science fair. Moreover, these girls tried Code Academy, did a mountain of research on passwords or pass phrases, and several experiments. When Video Games, Design and Code Your Own Adventure by Kathy Ceceri arrived, I knew from experience, kids would love to design their own video games. This book is sure to be a hit!
Last year, one group of my students explored coding for their science fair project. I have never seen a group more engaged! Yes, they performed well at the regional science fair. Moreover, these girls tried Code Academy, did a mountain of research on passwords or pass phrases, and several experiments. When Video Games, Design and Code Your Own Adventure by Kathy Ceceri arrived, I knew from experience, kids would love to design their own video games. This book is sure to be a hit!
Video Games has a history of computer games and goes in some length to describe the psychology underlying successful games. There are loads of projects throughout Video Games, such as the Cardboard Arcade Game (p. 8) and my favorite, Build Your Own Mancala Game (p. 23), with an egg carton and beans. Ms. Ceceri describes the process of designing and developing an original video game in some depth. The colorful illustrations by Mike Crosier will inspire kids to try to make their own graphics. Ms. Ceceri makes a point to describe terms germane to video games, such as haptics (p. 96) both in the text and in the glossary (pp. 113-116) and includes several pages of resources at the end of the book.
My Biology class is writing a children’s book together and decided to add a video game to support the book about polar bears, penguins, and pandas. The class was brain-storming ideas for a game to include habitats, food they eat, fun facts, etc. In Video Games, the book suggests the web site, Scratch, and includes instructions to create a Memory Game in Scratch (p. 100). I shared this idea with the class and emailed the link for Scratch to one of the parents to preview. Video Games has wide appeal. Librarians should pick up a copy as a resource for an afterschool gaming club. The project ideas, such as Scratch Cat Dodge Ball (p. 81) and Write a Pseudocode Algorithm (p.84) may be suitable for an elementary computer class to try. Parents and teachers alike who are interested in STEM or STEAM should pick up a copy. I can’t wait to see what my Biology class produces.
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