Learn to Program with Scratch: A Visual Introduction to Programming with Games, Art, Science, and Math Paperback – February 14, 2014

I chose this rating because the text is easy to read and easy to understand. It cross-references the scratch tutorials online and offers formatted practices for new students of programming.I bought the book after working at a booth at a statewide library association conference where "Learn to Program with Scratch" was on display.. The response to the book and publisher by dozens of librarians was impressive. One youth librarian bought the only sample copy available to support the Scratch Camp he offers every summer at the public library where he is on staff. I gave the book to my grandson (age 11) as a gift and watched him work through the first few sections. "Learn to Program With Scratch" is an excellent companion to any student of Scratch. I highly recommend this purchase for classrooms, tech classes, libraries or as a gift for the young student of programming.

This was a gift for grandchild.

This book is either poorly written, or it is out of date. The code for the first project didn't work. I did figure out how to make it work, but it took several hours of tinkering. I have to disagree with the many glowing reviews. This book is five star trash!

I am impressed with this book, but it is too sophisticated for my nine/ten year olds. It would take me extensive work to interpret it for them and create lessons from it. In the past, I bought Scratch programming books that were more suitable for their age and were easy to work through. I see this is recommended for "grades 6-12" which I would say is fair. However, I question whether at the maturity level, and the level of sophistication in this book, a student wouldn't be better off getting into a more advanced programming language, such as Ruby, Perl or even C.

I am an elementary school teacher, 4th grade. I bought this for one of my students who has a strong interest in programming after introducing him to scratch.MIT. when the book arrived, I was disappointed that it was written at such a high level. I decided to give it to him anyways. He took off with it and now holds "workshops" once a week in class to demonstrate and teach other students what he had learned!Amazing!

This book is "how to program WITH scratch" not FROM scratch. Bassically I thought this was going to teach early stages of Java Script or some other program language. Little did I know that it was how to program in SCRATCH which is a kid's program!

This book needs a lot of work that an editor at No Starch Press should have done before the book went to press. Kids and adults will find some of the language overly wordy and confusing. I bought this book because students I volunteer to help at a nearby middle school have started to learn Scratch programming. I thought grandkids might like to learn about Scratch, too. A few examples show my concerns:1. Page 34: "The blocks for initializing the pen and putting it down are not shown for the sake of brevity." OK, where can I find them? In an appendix? No.2. Page 37: "Drag the "when space key pressed' block from the Events palette..." How about: "For each of the 'When [key name] Key-Pressed' blocks, drag..."3. Page 38: "...by generating a random number between 0 and 7..." No immediate example of how to do that, although shown later in an example.Pages 74 and 75: The author switches from the word "procedures" to "blocks," which will confuse kids. He should use procedures, although they appear as blocks (so does most everything).Page 76: 'Detach the script connected to the "when I receive DrawFlower" block and connect it to the "define DrawFlower" block as shown in Figure 4-12. This results in a new procedure called "DrawFlower" that is implemented as a custom block. Delete the "when I receive DrawFlower" block because it is no longer needed.'How about something kids can better understand?1. Select the script in the "when I receive DrawFlower" block.2. Move this script to the "define DrawFlower" block and connect it as shown in Figure 4-12. This step creates a new procedure named "DrawFlower."3. Finally, delete the "when I receive DrawFlower" block because you no longer need it.I quit at page 80 and decided to learn Scratch just by trying things.

This is a great book. I teach my students how to code using Scatch and this is such a great resource. The examples are perfect, visually appealing and fun. My students love the games they create and are always looking forward to the next. It simplifies the process so that it's easier to explain. This was a good investment. Saves me from having to come up with the world of lessons.