Scratch Programming, Sean McManus, In Easy Steps, £10.99

This is well set out, with clear print and plenty of illustrations. It starts with an introduction to the Scratch 3 environment, and in next to no time the reader is creating a program. Granted, it’s a pretty simple one – the equivalent of learning a couple of chords when taking up the guitar – but it gives the reader an almost immediate sense of achievement. More difficult concepts are gradually introduced through a series of projects, culminating in using Scratch programming with physical devices. A checklist of things to check if the reader’s own program doesn’t work as expected completes the picture. The downside of this hand-holding is that until you reach almost to the end of the book it’s rather like painting with numbers or, for those old enough to remember, copying lines of code from a script. Nevertheless, it’s a good introduction to Scratch especially, and programming in general.

This review first appeared in Teach Secondary magazine.