Emmy in the Key of Code

by Aimee Lucido

Overview

In this innovative middle grade novel, coding and music take center stage as new girl Emmy tries to find her place in a new school. Perfect for fans of the Girls Who Code series and The Crossover.

In a new city, at a new school, twelve-year-old Emmy has never felt more out of tune.

Things start to look up when she takes her first coding class, unexpectedly connecting with the material—and Abigail, a new friend—through a shared language: music. But when Emmy gets bad news about their computer teacher, and finds out Abigail isn’t being entirely honest about their friendship, she feels like her new life is screeching to a halt.

Despite these obstacles, Emmy is determined to prove one thing: that, for the first time ever, she isn’t a wrong note, but a musician in the world’s most beautiful symphony.

Shortlisted for a Trinity Schools Book Award (TSBA) 2023

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780358040828
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/24/2019
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	644,421
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.30(d)
Lexile:	NP (what's this?)
Age Range:	10 - 12 Years

About the Author

Aimee Lucido is a software engineer and the author of EMMY IN THE KEY OF CODE. She got her MFA in writing for children and young adults at Hamline University and lives with her husband and dog in Berkeley, CA where she likes to bake, run, and write crossword puzzles.  www.aimeelucido.com  Twitter: @AimeeLucido   Instagram: @AimeeLucido

Read an Excerpt

California Dreaming

      I’d never visited California before we moved here
      but I’d heard about it
      in songs.

      Mom even made a playlist
      and she and Dad sang along
      the whole drive over from Wisconsin
      but even after three days straight of
         Katy Perry
         the Beach Boys
         the Mamas & the Papas
      I still didn’t believe it.
      Why would people here be different
      than anywhere else?

      But now that I’m here
      on the first day of sixth grade at my new school
      the hallway is full of kids
      tapping on cell phones that probably cost more
      than an entire month’s rent
      in our new house.

      Plus
      everyone looks like they just jumped off the cover
      of a magazine.
      Hipster glasses
      jeans where the only holes
      were put there on purpose
      and everyone pulling out a reusable container
      full of weird grains
      that must be their lunch.

      I tug down my Packers hoodie
      because it’s colder here
      than the Beach Boys promised
      and this way no one can see
      that I look nothing like
      the cover of
      a magazine.

      I wish San Francisco
      would go back
      to just being
      a song.

Pretending

      As I walk down the hallway
      I head-hum my favorite walking song.
      Beethoven’s Minuet in G.
         dum dee dum dee dum dee dum dee dum

      I move andante
      matching my steps to the beat
         left, and right, and left, and right, and left

      so I can pretend
      I’m not at all sore
      from climbing up the hill in front of the school.
         left, and right, and left, and right, and left

      I can pretend I’ve been hiking it my whole life.
         left, and right, and left, and right, and left

      I can pretend I don’t smell like Wisconsin
      and that I wore the right clothes to school today
      and that I’m going to make tons of friends
      and have an amazing year
         left, and right, and left, and right, and left

      just like everyone else.

Locker Number 538

      Finally I reach my locker
         12 clockwise
         32 counterclockwise
         8 clockwise

         Stuck.

Attempted Duet No. 1

      “Hi, I’m new here. My name is–”

         “That’s my locker.”

Editorial Reviews

06/03/2019

Written in verse and JavaScript, this timely debut from author and software engineer Lucido champions girls in STEM and delivers a positive message about being “always exactly yourself.” Sixth-grader Emmy has just moved with her musical parents from Wisconsin to San Francisco so her pianist father can play with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Despite a love of music and talented parents, Emmy lacks musical ability and fears being on stage. When she is placed in an Introduction to Computer Coding class at school, Emmy meets Abigail, a gifted singer who secretly prefers coding to performing. Together, and with the help of an encouraging teacher, the two girls become fluent in Java and share a growing love of computer science. But when their teacher reveals that she’s gravely ill, Emmy fears that she will lose the one place where she truly belongs. Through the author’s creative mesh of coding, music, poetry, and narrative, this story uniquely conveys the art and beauty that can be found in multiple disciplines. Emmy’s desperate search for both friendship and affirmation is relatable and relevant, as is the powerful message that computer programming is for anyone interested. Ages 10–12. Agent: Kathleen Rushall, Andrea Brown Literary Agency. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

08/01/2019

Gr 5–7—On her first day at her new school in San Francisco, 12-year-old Emmy is asked to choose an elective. Although one of the options is music (the one she should want, given her opera singer mother and concert pianist father), she has always felt like a disappointment as a musician. Instead, she leaves the form blank and ends up as one of two girls in a computer programming class. At first, the class only adds to Emmy's sense of not belonging, especially because one of the boys makes derisive noises and faces at her whenever she tries to speak. But Emmy finds that she loves her coding teacher, Mrs. Delaney. As she learns more about coding in JAVA, she discovers a way to create her own kind of music and makes a new best friend along the way. As Emmy's computer programming classes progress, the poems integrate the JAVA terminology and syntax she has learned, until the pages begin to look like computer code that still reads like poetry. JAVA terms are also defined on separate pages within each chapter, as well as in a glossary at the end of the book. In this ambitious novel in free verse, the characters and relationships are complex and believable as Emmy struggles to understand her new best friend Abigail, her bully Francis, her teacher's illness, and her parents' own difficulties adapting to their new jobs. The book also touches on some of the challenges girls face in pursuing STEM-related fields, while portraying the different ways computers can be used to create something new and fun. VERDICT This unusual tale seamlessly weaves basic computer coding concepts into a compelling story about middle schoolers struggling to forge their own identities in spite of the expectations of their families and society.—Ashley Larsen, Pacifica Libraries, CA

School Library Journal

★ 2019-05-08
A 12-year-old whose dreams of musicianship are shattered discovers a passion for code.

Emmy's lonely at her new San Francisco school. When her pianist dad got a dream job at the symphony, the family moved from Wisconsin—her mom's opera career is portable—but Emmy's miserable. Devastated she doesn't have the talent to follow in her parents' footsteps, she ends up in computer club instead of choir. And it's there, learning Java, that Emmy makes friends with Abigail—and discovers that coding gives her a joy she'd believed came only from music. Free-verse chapters are conventional at first, drawing poetic structures from musical metaphors. But as Emmy learns Java, the language and structure of programming seep into her poems. Music and code interweave (one poem presents Emmy and Abigail's pair-programming as a musical duet). Typeface changes have myriad effects: showcasing software and musical terms, mirroring the way formatting helps programmers understand software, and reflecting Emmy's emotional state. As she becomes more comfortable in her own skin, she grows aware of the many traumas that affect her family, classmates, and teachers, and readers will cheer to see them work collectively—like an orchestra or like software developers—to create something beautiful. Characters' races are unspecified, but on the cover Emmy presents white and Abigail (whose braids are referred to repeatedly) as black.

Never didactic, these poems interweave music, programming, family drama, and middle school as interconnected parts of Emmy's life. (glossary) (Verse fiction. 9-13)

Kirkus Reviews

"As Emmy learns Java, the language and structure of programming seep into her poems. Music and code interweave…. and readers will cheer to see them work collectively…to create something beautiful.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Music, coding, strong female techie role models—this engaging first novel should attract a wide audience." — Booklist

"This timely debut...champions girls in STEM and delivers a positive message about being 'always exactly yourself'....Through the author’s creative mesh of coding, music, poetry, and narrative, this story uniquely conveys the art and beauty that can be found in multiple disciplines.... relatable and relevant."  — Publishers Weekly

"This unusual tale seamlessly weaves basic computer coding concepts into a compelling story about middle schoolers struggling to forge their own identities in spite of the expectations of their families and society." — School Library Journal

From the Publisher