Wilhelmiina Won Waak hooked on computer

Marja Aho 2011: Wilhelmiina Won Waak
Princess Wilhelmiina is a regular teenage duck. She spends her day at BeakBook and posts videos on BeakTube. Her parents are starting to worry about her. She is getting into the marrying age, but she is not interested.  King Wilhelm suggest a party, but Wilhelmina doesn't want to. But then her BeakBook page starts to get friend requests and they want to meet her.  Even a Flipperball player, who looks really nice, is interested. Wilhelmiina changes her mind and a party is held.

Wilhelmiina waits for the Flipperball player all night. None of the other boys will do: one has too flat flipper, the other has a wrong shaped beak. Wilhelmiina finds fault in all and is really sad about missing the Flipperball player.  Her parents are not pleased with her behavior.  All the boys leave disappointed. Exept one, who plays the flute and makes Wilhelmiina cheer up.


Then Wilhelmiina's brother Wiktor tells her that he arranged for all the other ducks to contact Wilhelmiina, so there would be a party. Wilhelmiina gets mad.  She also decides to write to the Flipperball player and demand an explanation. He said, he was sick and they arrange to meet the next day.

Wilhelmiina waits  and waits in the park. She left her phone home, so she could focus on the Flipperball player.  Then a fox leaps from the bush and takes Wilhelmiina to his cave. He is planning to have duck soup for dinner. Wilhelmiina is in a cage, but she persuades the fox to let her out for a while to look for recipes from the Internet. When the fox is not looking, Wilhelmiina send a message to the boy, who played the flute at the party.  He comes and rescues Wilhelmiina and the marry.

Donald Duck is very popular in Finland and I bet this book was inspired by him. Even though  the book was published in 2011 the discussion about kids using too much electronic devices is still current.

Hello Ruby - adventures in coding

Linda Liukas 2015

Book about programming. Ruby is a little girl with a massive imagination. She is somewhat cheeky: she leaves the pajamas on, when dad tells her to put on school clothes: he did not tell her to take off the pajamas first. (Lucky dad, who wouldn't want  a kid who needs specific instructions to do every day chores?)

One day dad hides Ruby five treasures. She is all excited. But first she has to find the clues. The clues tell that snow leopard lives in the mountains, penguins do not live in houses, foxes live 100 x 4 steps away from the snow leopard. Ruby draws a map and off she goes.

Programming can be seen throughout the book: in Ruby's hints to find the treasures as well as Ruby directing the foxes to be more efficient in their garden.

The kids may like it, but the target audience are the adults: the resistance to program does not come from the kids, but from their parents.  The book has great examples of how repeating something can create larger entities.

The book also includes exercises that help children to think in programming mode. It is not hard if you practice it.

Programming is taught in Finnish comprehensive school, but there is again a heated discussion, why girls are not interested in programming. Programming is considered a mathematical skill. But why? Aren't they programming LANGUAGES? A smart marketing person should take this and redo the programming image. Kids shouldn't be labeled with mathematical skills and language skills. Anybody can learn anything if they just put time and effort to it. Just make it interesting.