A review by nicolemhewitt
Team BFF: Race to the Finish! by Reshma Saujani, Stacia Deutsch
4.0
This review and many more can be found on my blog: Feed Your Fiction Addiction
The second book in the series focuses on Sophia, the sports-minded ex-best friend from the first book. One of the things that I liked about the books is that they stressed the fact that all of the girls in the coding club have different talents and interests besides coding. Lucy is relatively focused on all things tech, but Sophie’s sporty, Maya loves fashion and Erin enjoys theatre. It shows that you don’t have to be all about computers to enjoy coding and opens kids’ eyes to the myriad of ways that computers can apply to other areas of interest.
In this book, the coding group is all set to compete in a robotics competition, but Sophia runs into some issues with her family’s scheduling and instead of letting her friends know and trusting that they’ll have her back, she tries to fix the problems all on her own. Not surprisingly, that doesn’t work well. It’s not until she finally tells her friends what’s going on that they all work together to solve the problem.
Many middle school girls will probably relate to Sophia’s issues at home, where she feels a bit overlooked. Her family relies on her a lot to take care of her little sisters. I wasn’t a fan of Sophia’s parents—they really didn’t seem to care much about their daughter’s dreams or interests. I’m sure this has happened to almost all parents at one point or another—where you know something is important to your kid, but you just can’t make it happen scheduling-wise—but I thought that their attitude about it all was kind of cruel (I feel like I would have at least tried my very hardest to make things work out differently—it didn’t feel like Sophia’s parents tried very hard at all—her father even put up extra roadblocks at the very last minute). Still, I’m guessing the theme of feeling overlooked will resonate with a lot of kids.
This book has a little bit of a romantic subplot as well, which I’m sure a lot of middle school girls will enjoy. It was cute and I loved the way that it was all resolved. I don’t think this book tied in quite as much practical coding knowledge as the first book did, but we did get to see the girls in action at the robotics competition and see their problem-solving skills at work there.
Overall, this was a really fun read that I highly recommend to middle grade girls or even younger. Again, I give this book an easy 4/5 Stars
***Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. No other compensation was given and all opinions are my own.***
The second book in the series focuses on Sophia, the sports-minded ex-best friend from the first book. One of the things that I liked about the books is that they stressed the fact that all of the girls in the coding club have different talents and interests besides coding. Lucy is relatively focused on all things tech, but Sophie’s sporty, Maya loves fashion and Erin enjoys theatre. It shows that you don’t have to be all about computers to enjoy coding and opens kids’ eyes to the myriad of ways that computers can apply to other areas of interest.
In this book, the coding group is all set to compete in a robotics competition, but Sophia runs into some issues with her family’s scheduling and instead of letting her friends know and trusting that they’ll have her back, she tries to fix the problems all on her own. Not surprisingly, that doesn’t work well. It’s not until she finally tells her friends what’s going on that they all work together to solve the problem.
Many middle school girls will probably relate to Sophia’s issues at home, where she feels a bit overlooked. Her family relies on her a lot to take care of her little sisters. I wasn’t a fan of Sophia’s parents—they really didn’t seem to care much about their daughter’s dreams or interests. I’m sure this has happened to almost all parents at one point or another—where you know something is important to your kid, but you just can’t make it happen scheduling-wise—but I thought that their attitude about it all was kind of cruel (I feel like I would have at least tried my very hardest to make things work out differently—it didn’t feel like Sophia’s parents tried very hard at all—her father even put up extra roadblocks at the very last minute). Still, I’m guessing the theme of feeling overlooked will resonate with a lot of kids.
This book has a little bit of a romantic subplot as well, which I’m sure a lot of middle school girls will enjoy. It was cute and I loved the way that it was all resolved. I don’t think this book tied in quite as much practical coding knowledge as the first book did, but we did get to see the girls in action at the robotics competition and see their problem-solving skills at work there.
Overall, this was a really fun read that I highly recommend to middle grade girls or even younger. Again, I give this book an easy 4/5 Stars
***Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. No other compensation was given and all opinions are my own.***