Code For Teens: The Awesome Beginner's Guide to Programming (Volume 1) Review

Have a kid that is interested in learning how to code? Are you lost on how to teach them? Then the book Code For Teens: The Awesome Beginner's Guide to Programming (Volume1) from Code Teens is the book for you or rather them. My 10-year-old is not quite a teen yet but she is interested in coding and I know next to nothing about it. The book is really supposed to be geared toward kids a little older than 10 with at least a 6th-grade reading level, but she really wanted to give it a try and she is reading above a 6th-grade reading level. I would say that the book is geared toward the right grade level. 

The book was designed to allow kids to learn code using JavaScript at their own pace. I believe JavaScript is one of the more easy things to learn in coding. The learn at your own pace is one of the reasons this book is working out so well for my younger kid. It introduces concepts slowly and it gives her lots of drills or challenges so that she can get plenty of practice before they move on. After the first chapter or two, the book starts to offer a review of previous concepts that they have learned so that they don't forget. I love the review because she tends to forget things if she doesn't do them more than once.


My daughter says the lessons are easy to follow and she doesn't really need help to follow them. Every now in then, she comes in with a question mostly how to pronounce a word. She seems to be able to do everything it asks her to. She has yet to have to ask me how to access something on the computer. So I feel that it explains things very well. She is not yet done with the book but so far I am impressed. She had been doing 1-2 lessons a week since we are on our summer schedule. So far she is understanding the lessons and is enjoying what she is learning, and she is sticking with it. It takes her around an hour per lesson. She has had to do some lessons more than once but that is ok with me she is learning at her own pace. She thinks the cartoon illustrations are fun and they make the lessons a bit more interesting. I think she has even tried to redraw some of them. There are somewhere around 100 illustrations in the book.  All the illustrations are age appropriate and nicely done in color.

Code for Teens sells for around $25 and you can find it on the website. I feel that this is a fair price for the book and all that it covers. It is something I can recommend for someone wanting to learn how to code on their own. My youngest will probably use the book next year. I hope to see them come out with a Volume 2 to take them to the next level in coding.

Don't forget to click the banner below and see what some of the other kids in different grade levels thought of Code for Teens.