Ara the Star Engineer by Komal Singh

Inspired by her own young daughter’s declaration that “engineers are boys”,

Komal Singh set out to write a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) book featuring real life women engineering superheroes at Google.

Ara the Star Engineer shows the importance of representation in STEM and inspires young minds of all genders. Singh introduces computer science ideas and includes resources in a secret notebook and accompanying website: www.arastarengineer.com.

Ara wants to count all the starts in the sky. With the help of her robot assistant, DeeDee, Ara sets out to figure out a computer program to count the stars. First, Ara discovers that any big problem can be solved by a plan. Next, she learns about writing an algorithm, which is just a fancy way to say step by step instructions, like a recipe. Ara then learns she must turn her algorithm into a code---a language used to communicate with computers. Ara learns that sometimes things can go wrong in a code and you get an error message. She is tenacious, however, and does not give up because she’s a problem solver!

Will you be just like Ara and take the first step to learn how to code?