Lucy Lopez Read online

  OTHER BOOKS IN THE AFTER-SCHOOL

  SUPERSTARS SERIES

  NIXIE NESS

  COOKING STAR

  VERA VANCE

  COMICS STAR

  Margaret Ferguson Books

  Text copyright © 2020 by Claudia Mills

  Pictures copyright © 2020 by Grace Zong

  All Rights Reserved

  HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  www.holidayhouse.com

  First Edition

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Mills, Claudia, author. | Zong, Grace, illustrator.

  Title: Lucy Lopez, coding star / Claudia Mills; pictures by Grace Zong.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Holiday House, [2020] | Series: After-school superstars | “Margaret Ferguson Books.” | Audience: Ages 7–10 | Audience: Grades 2–3 | Summary: Third-grader Lucy Lopez attends coding camp at her after-school program and becomes a coding star.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019036535 | ISBN 9780823446285 (hardcover)

  Subjects: CYAC: Computer programming—Fiction. | After-school programs—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.M63963 Lr 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019036535

  Ebook ISBN 9780823448791

  a_prh_5.6.0_c0_r0

  ★

  To my beloved sister, Cheryl Mills, who made the Let’s Have Fun Club with me, and to all younger sisters everywhere

  ★

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books in the After-School Superstars Series

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  How to Get Started as a Coder

  Acknowledgments

  Lucy Lopez poked her older sister, Elena, who sat hunched over the keyboard in front of the family-room computer. On the screen a kangaroo was dancing to a hip-hop beat. The kangaroo kicked to the right, kicked to the left, then twirled in place, paws waving.

  Of course a kangaroo would dance to hip-hop.

  “You’ve been on the computer forever,” Lucy complained. If only Elena would finish up and work on their special club badges with her instead. But ever since Elena had attended a four-week after-school coding camp a month ago with her best friend, Juniper, it was hard to tear her away from the computer.

  Elena ignored Lucy’s comment. With another few motions of her busy fingers on the touchpad, Elena had changed the code to make the dancing kangaroo a dancing hedgehog, hopping just as energetically.

  “Mom said only one hour,” Lucy pointed out.

  “Yes, and I still have one minute and forty-seven seconds left,” Elena replied, glancing at the timer on the table.

  Elena paused the dance to turn the hedgehog into a turtle moving jerkily like a robot, and then—hooray, hooray!—only five seconds were left on the timer—four, three, two, one, ding!

  “Now let’s work on our badges!” Lucy said.

  She and Elena had created a special sisters’ club after their mother announced she was done forever with any activities that involved anybody having to sell anything: wrapping paper, coupon books, or—especially—cookies. So Lucy and Elena had made the Let’s Have Fun Club, where they created their own badges, designing what each badge looked like in a Let’s Have Fun Club handbook, and making up lists of the things they had to do to earn each one. Once they earned a badge, they cut it out of the handbook and taped it onto a crepe-paper sash.

  The club name was perfect because earning badges was the most fun thing in the entire world. So far they had earned badges for making bracelets, reading books, and completing jigsaw puzzles. The jigsaw-puzzle badge was Lucy’s favorite. She was the one who had made up its list of requirements:

  1. Finish three 100-piece puzzles.

  2. Finish one 500-piece puzzle all by yourself with no help from anyone else.

  3. Do five 25-piece little-kid puzzles in under five minutes.

  4. Do one little-kid puzzle with the pieces turned picture-side down.

  5. Make your own puzzle by pasting a picture from a magazine onto cardboard and cutting it up into jigsaw-puzzle pieces.

  But these days all Elena wanted to do was sit at the computer and code, code, code—even though the hair-styling badge they were supposed to be working on was one Elena herself had created.

  “All right,” Elena said reluctantly, pushing her chair back from the computer. “I’ll show you how to make those cute little double buns, one on each side of your head. That’s number four on the list of badge requirements.”

  Ten minutes later, both girls had two dark knobs of hair sticking up on the tops of their heads, like extra pairs of fuzzy black-bear ears. When they inspected themselves in the bathroom mirror, Lucy could see the buns Elena had made on Lucy’s head were neater than the buns Lucy had made on Elena’s head.

  “Are mine good enough for the badge?” Lucy asked.

  Sometimes Elena was extra-picky about the badges. She hadn’t let Lucy count one of her bracelets for the bracelet-making badge since she had copied Elena’s design too closely.

  “Sure,” Elena said. “Our handbook doesn’t say ‘Make a perfect double bun.’ Messy buns are in right now, anyway.”

  Lucy let out her breath with happy relief. “Now can we make French braids?” she asked. “It’s the only thing we have left for the badge.”

  Elena shook her head. “That’s enough club stuff for today. I’m going over to Juniper’s for a while.” In a whisper she added, “Her mom doesn’t put a timer on her computer.”

  So ten minutes later, Elena was gone and Lucy was alone. She could start working on earning a different badge from the handbook—like the cookie-baking badge—but she and Elena had always earned their badges together. It wouldn’t be the same baking cookies all by herself.

  Maybe they could create a coding badge for the club! And Elena could show Lucy how to write codes for it, the way she had shown her how to make the double buns. But for some reason, Elena never wanted to show Lucy how to do stuff on the computer. Of course, it would take a lot longer to teach someone how to do computer coding than to teach them how to make a new hairstyle. Elena had spent a whole month in coding camp to learn everything she knew now.

  What if…what if Lucy went to coding camp, too? Lucy had a flyer stuffed in the bottom of her backpack for a third-grade coding camp run by the same teachers who had taught Elena’s fifth-grade camp. If Lucy went to coding camp, she’d learn the things Elena already knew without having to nag Elena, and then she and Elena could earn a Let’s Have Fun Club coding badge together!

  Lucy found her mother on the couch in the family room, red pen in hand, grading Spanish quizzes. Looking up from her pile of papers, her mother focused her gaze on Lucy’s head.

  “What are those?”

  “Double buns. Elena made them for me.”

  “Oh,” her mother said. “Fancy.”

  “Can I go to coding camp?” Lucy asked. “Like Elena did? The one for third graders starts this week.”

  She held out the crumpled flyer she had retrieved from the bottom of her backpack.

  Her mother gave a huge sigh. “Well, fair is
fair,” she said.

  Lucy had expected the sigh. In addition to disapproving of programs that involved selling things, her mom thought kids nowadays had too many scheduled activities. So most days after school Lucy and Elena walked across the elementary-school parking lot to the high school, where their mom taught Spanish and their dad taught history. There they did homework or read books until it was time for everyone to go home. Elena had used her best begging skills to convince their mom to let her do the coding camp.

  “It’s just that…everything’s a camp or a class nowadays,” her mother said. “Whatever happened to kids having fun on their own?”

  “Elena and I do have fun on our own!” They had created a whole entire club to have fun on their own! In fact, the only reason Lucy wanted to go to coding camp was because of the club the two of them had created.

  “I know,” her mother said with another sigh, reaching over to push a stray strand of hair back into one of Lucy’s buns. “If you want to do the camp, we’ll sign you up.”

  “Yay!” Lucy nodded so vigorously that one of her buns tumbled down, but she didn’t care. “Hooray!”

  * * *

  —

  On Sunday afternoon Lucy didn’t utter a single complaint as Elena’s hour of computer time ticked down. Soon she’d be the one with the timer ticking; her fingers would be confidently moving on the touchpad; it would be her dancing kangaroo!

  Now she had a reason to try to follow the blocks flying across the screen to figure out exactly what Elena was doing. How did the kangaroo become a bear? How did the bear know to start doing disco moves? But her sister did everything so quickly, it was still a mystery.

  “Stop breathing down my neck,” Elena snapped. “Why don’t you go get the stuff we need for the French braids? I’ll be done in four minutes and twelve—no, eleven—seconds.”

  French braids turned out to be harder than double buns, and Lucy was so excited about coding camp that she found herself tuning out during some of Elena’s instructions. But half an hour later an elegant French braid lay flat against the back of Lucy’s head, and a crooked French braid lay flat against the back of Elena’s.

  “Did I pass?” Lucy asked.

  Elena craned her neck around to inspect the braid Lucy had made. She took longer to answer this time.

  “Yes,” she finally said.

  Lucy cut out the circular hair-styling badge from the page in their club handbook where the badges created so far were displayed. Then she promptly taped it to her crepe-paper sash.

  She noticed Elena wasn’t cutting out her hair-styling badge. In fact, Elena hadn’t even added the jigsaw-puzzle badge to her sash yet. Didn’t Elena even care about the Let’s Have Fun Club anymore?

  Was now the time for Lucy to tell Elena she was going to do the coding camp, too, so they could start earning Let’s Have Fun Club coding badges together? Maybe that would make Elena excited about the club the way she used to be.

  But she found herself hesitating. Elena could be so prickly sometimes, like when she hadn’t let Lucy count her woven bracelet for the badge because its design wasn’t “original” enough. Still, Elena was going to find out about Lucy’s coding camp when Lucy didn’t walk over to the high school with her tomorrow afternoon.

  “I was thinking…” Lucy said. “I was thinking that if I learned coding, then we could have coding badges for the club, and so I talked to Mom, and she said I could go to coding camp, too.”

  Elena didn’t say anything at first, busying herself with gathering up combs and brushes. She collected the rubber bands and returned them to their plastic container. She placed the mirror back in the bathroom vanity drawer.

  “I don’t think you’re going to like coding,” Elena said then. “It’s really hard. It’s not like jigsaw puzzles, where it’s super-obvious how the pieces fit together.”

  Lucy thought a five-hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle was hard. It wasn’t obvious how five hundred different pieces fit together.

  Elena started unraveling the lopsided French braid Lucy had made for her, yanking at the intertwined strands of hair as if she were mad at them for some reason.

  “I just can’t see computers being your thing,” Elena said, “the way they’re my thing. You know, like how gardening is Dad’s thing, but not Mom’s thing? And how salsa dancing is Mom’s thing, but not Dad’s thing?”

  But how could Lucy know if coding was her thing if she had never even tried it?

  Then Elena shrugged. “Well, suit yourself. But if you get mega-frustrated with coding, don’t come complaining to me.”

  “I won’t,” Lucy said.

  She didn’t plan to be complaining to anybody at all.

  Elena didn’t understand how fun it would be once she and Lucy could both do cool coding things on the computer for a Let’s Have Fun Club coding badge.

  Lucy closed her eyes and imagined two sister kangaroos, side by side, happily hip-hopping on the computer screen.

  Together.

  The after-school coding camp met in one of the third-grade classrooms that wasn’t Lucy’s. Once the lady-in-charge-of-everything, Colleen, checked her off on the attendance clipboard, Lucy surveyed the space where fifteen or so kids had gathered, hoping to find someone to sit with. Most of the kids were from the other two third-grade classes, but Lucy knew a few of them.

  Boogie Bass was always falling out of his chair at lunch in the cafeteria, and then laughing about it afterward. Lucy might as well sit next to him, not that she had ever fallen out of her chair. But if she did, she had a feeling Boogie would grin and make her feel it hadn’t been such a catastrophe.

  Sure enough, Boogie gave her a big grin as she slipped into her seat.

  “You weren’t in cooking camp or comic-book camp,” he said. “They were awesome, but this one is going to be the awesomest!”

  Lucy tried to return his grin. What if coding turned out to be as mega-frustrating for her as Elena had warned it would be?

  When all the campers had filed in, Colleen introduced the camp teachers, Preston and Pippa. They looked different from what Lucy had expected. Because they knew everything there was to know about computer coding, Lucy had thought they would look more computer-y—maybe like C-3PO and R2-D2 in Star Wars. But they didn’t look like robots at all. Preston was short and chubby, like someone who would run a cooking camp. Pippa was tall and slim, with a mane of long flowing curls, like someone who would run an acting camp, maybe even a movie-star camp.

  “Okay,” Pippa said. “You’re here for coding camp. So what is coding?”

  It’s a way of making kangaroos dance. But Lucy wasn’t going to raise her hand to say that.

  Nolan Nanda, who was sitting on the other side of Boogie, was the first with his hand in the air.

  “Coding is how people give instructions to a computer so the computer will do what they want it to do,” Nolan said in a slow, careful way, more like how Lucy had thought a coding-camp teacher would talk.

  “Exactly,” Pippa said.

  Boogie beamed at Lucy. “Nolan knows everything,” he told her proudly.

  “Next question,” Preston went on. “Are computers smart or dumb?”

  “Smart!” most of the campers shouted. Lucy didn’t shout anything, but she didn’t think computers were very smart if they had to have a person sitting at the keyboard telling them exactly what to do.

  Preston and Pippa both shook their heads.

  “Nope,” Pippa said. As if she didn’t want any computers to hear her and feel insulted, she whispered, “Computers are dumb.” She went on, “Sure, computers can do amazing things. But they can do those things only because some human being told them what to do. In this camp, you are going to be that human being.”

  So Lucy had been right! And now she would be the human being—just like Elena!

  Preston took over. “When you give instructions to a human being, the human being can
often figure out what you meant, even if it isn’t exactly what you said. Okay, now I need a human being.” He looked around the room and pointed to the girl sitting in front of Nolan. “You. What’s your name?”

  “Nixie.”

  “A fine name for a human being! All right, Nixie, please walk around the room.”

  Nixie giggled as she hopped up from her seat, strutted around the desks and chairs, and then plopped back down into her seat again.

  “Ta-da!” Nixie said. “Was I a good human being?”

  “You were an excellent human being,” Preston said.

  Now it was Nixie’s turn to beam.

  “The rest of you: What are some of the things Nixie did that a computer wouldn’t have known to do because I didn’t include those things in my instructions?”

  No one raised a hand, not even Nolan. Lucy tried to guess the answer. Well, Nixie had giggled, and a computer wouldn’t giggle. And Nixie had walked quickly, and Preston hadn’t told her how fast or slow to go.

  After a long pause, Preston answered his own question: “She stood up first.”

  That was true! Nixie had also sat down at the end, without being told to do that, either.

  Preston seated himself in the teacher’s chair and started to “walk” his feet away from the desk, scooting the chair along with him. All the campers laughed, including Lucy.

  Then he went on: “Nixie walked around the perimeter of the room—the outer edge—instead of just randomly through the desks. But walk around the room could just mean walk all over the place, right?”

  Now Preston started to “walk” his chair right into the desk of one of the kids sitting in the first row.

  “Oops!” Preston said, bumping the kid’s desk, as the campers laughed again. Lucy hadn’t expected the computer teachers to be so funny.

  “Nixie walked around the room once. Did I say to walk around the room just one time? That’s exactly what I intended for her to do, but it’s not what I told her to do. But Nixie figured out what I meant because she’s a human being, and human beings are smart. Finally, a computer wouldn’t even know what a room is—or what walking is—if we didn’t tell it first.”