{"id":971,"date":"2015-08-06T07:24:45","date_gmt":"2015-08-06T12:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/?p=971"},"modified":"2015-08-06T07:25:33","modified_gmt":"2015-08-06T12:25:33","slug":"secret-coders-by-gene-luen-yang-and-mike-holmes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/?p=971","title":{"rendered":"Secret Coders, by Gene Luen Yang and Mike Holmes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Review copy provided by First Second Books.<\/p>\n<p>I loved Gene Luen Yang&#8217;s <em>Boxers<\/em> and <em>Saints<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1596439246\/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1596439246&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=novegazi-20&amp;linkId=YFQF2DKGORGLOLEL\">duology<\/a>, so I was really excited to get <em>Secret Coders<\/em> in the mail. It&#8217;s a comic about programming! With a young heroine named Hopper! It looked right up my alley.<\/p>\n<p>It was not quite what I hoped, and it&#8217;s not fair to ding authors for writing what they wanted to write instead of what you wanted to read. It&#8217;s an explicitly didactic comic, teaching the sorts of <del datetime=\"2015-08-04T01:28:29+00:00\">basic<\/del> elementary programming lessons you&#8217;d learn in a programming class in the mid-&#8217;80s. What is binary, how do you make a turtle move&#8230;familiar stuff, done as live-action for kids trying to figure out their school and its weird birds and mysterious grounds. The action-adventure plot takes a serious backseat to the programming lessons, and the interpersonal plots feel really paint-by-numbers, the plot twists not very twisty.<\/p>\n<p>This is a worthwhile book, but it&#8217;s not the exciting breakthrough I had hoped from the creator of <em>Boxers<\/em> and <em>Saints<\/em>. I hope later volumes in the series let Hopper, Eni, and even Josh (why is Josh even there? ugh, shut up, Josh!) find that balance a little more towards the side of excitement.<\/p>\n<p>Please consider using our link to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1626720754\/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1626720754&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=novegazi-20&amp;linkId=Y5XMIRA2A5AUUOYN\">buy <em>Secret Coders<\/em> from Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Review copy provided by First Second Books. I loved Gene Luen Yang&#8217;s Boxers and Saints duology, so I was really excited to get Secret Coders in the mail. It&#8217;s a comic about programming! With a young heroine named Hopper! It looked right up my alley. It was not quite what I hoped, and it&#8217;s not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bookses-precious"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=971"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":977,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions\/977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}