In Project Animation, young coders can use and refine their Scratch skills to create cool, professional animations. Project Code is a great series for young coders already familiar with Scratch, who are ready to take the next step. With a series of fun projects to master, each book allows readers to explore, create and learn coding fundamentals as they go along. This series supports the National Curriculum for Computing at KS2 and is ideal for readers aged 6 and up.
Wood, Kevin Project Code: Create an Animation with Scratch, 32 pages. NON-FICTION. Lerner, 2018. $20.
Like most coding books this book requires a computer with access to the internet so the reader/coder can download the resources the book requires (like their custom animations and the scratch program itself). After that readers can learn all about the basics of animation from loops, to decision making, to operators, debugging, and more. Large pages with colorful layouts make the step by step process fairly simple.
This book is awesome for those upper grade students who have already been introduced to the basics of code and are ready to move forward. Many of the upper grade students at my school have used scratch via some tutorials, but this would allow them even more freedom with the program, and animation is a very appealing topic. I could see this getting a lot of check-outs after our school does the annual Hour of Code in December.
As far as introducing kids to programming and coding, this book is great. Creating animation though, is only basically covered. It is definitely for young students and beginners. And of course, the reader must have access to a computer. The book reads as a supplemental manual to Scratch's online projects, which is helpful for those using the Scratch resources.