Coding Games In Scratch by Dr. Jon Woodcock (Revised and updated for Scratch 3.0 with Foreward by Carol Vorderman) is a book that I've been trying to use to get my kids into programming. My middle daughter likes using block coding to make things on Code.org, so I thought this might be a good one since Scratch is a block-based programming language that was developed for educational use by MIT. So far she hasn't gotten interested in going through the book yet, but I have myself. I wanted to prepare for any questions that they had, if any.
I found something that I think would be very difficult for a child in the target audience to figure out, I even struggled to find the appropriate code block.
In Chapter 4, Cheese Chase, on page 54, step 8, there is a reference to the "direction of Gamepad". I looked through the Sensing options and found "backdrop # of Stage" but I couldn't see "direction" to select from the first dropdown until after I selected "Gamepad" in the second dropdown.
Similarly, in Chapter 6, Jumpy Monkey, on page 96, step 7, there is a reference to the "direction of Launcher". A few days later, I had forgotten what I did before. I reviewed the entire list of code blocks again, from top to bottom. I noticed the Sensing options trying to adjust the "backdrop #" from "backdrop # of Stage" but I couldn't find "direction" so I looked for it in another code block. Eventually I realized I needed to select from the first dropdown only after selecting "Launcher" in the second dropdown.
If you're reading through this book, I recommend making a note for the readers to find the "... of ..." block in the Sensing section. It would be nice if the book explained more about selecting the target object first, and provide clearer visual clues for harder-to-find code blocks.
Other than that, I think the book has been great. Even though the target audience is for children in grades 3-6, I've been enjoying learning more about the capabilities of Scratch myself.
