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Like a lot of '90s kids, I devoured The Baby-Sitters Club books like they were sugary cereal. The series taught me about friendship, responsibility, and the freedom that comes along with earning your own money—and was my first experience defining myself through fictional characters. Today I might say that I’m "a total Hannah" or "equal parts Carrie and Miranda." Back then, though, I could tell you I was a Claudia mixed with a dash of Mary Anne.
And that’s no trivial thing—seeing ourselves reflected in culture is important. When I read about Claudia, it affirmed my love of art and dramatic accessories. And Mary Anne taught me it was OK—valuable, even!—to be soft-spoken and a little shy.
Reshma Saujani gets that literary representation matters, especially to adolescent girls, and she’s using it to attack the gender gap in tech with the release of two new books, Girls Who Code: Learn to Code and Change the World, a fun guide to coding for girls, and The Friendship Code, the first in a series of fiction books for middle-grade readers, inspired by Girls Who Code (think Baby-Sitters Club, but with computers). The idea is that the novel will inspire girls to learn to code, and the nonfiction book gives them a great place to start doing that.
Saujani is the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, the all-star tech program for girls. Since 2012, she’s been on a mission to get more young girls interested in learning to write computer code, so they can go on to get jobs in computer science and help close the gender gap in the tech industry. She thinks that if we empower this generation of girls with technology, they'll use it to change the world. "I mean, what if you had hundreds of thousands of girl coders who were solving the world’s problems?” she told Glamour.
The Friendship Code tells the story of Lucy, a middle schooler who can’t wait to join the coding club at school so she can finally build an app that will help out her favorite uncle, who has cancer. Her friends in the club include fashion-girl Maya, sporty Sophia, and theater-kid Erin. They're characters girls can see themselves in—and they’re all into computer science. Plus, they're all working on cool, ambitious coding projects.
“Girls think about computer science, and that job looks and feels isolating—it doesn’t look like you’re working on things that are important. And when they turn on the TV or open up a magazine they don’t see coders who look like them," Saujani said. "We want to create inspirational stories that they can see themselves in."
Girls Who Code: Learn to Code and Change the World builds on that by breaking down the basics of coding in a fun, relatable way. There are also bios of awesome women from history who worked in tech, tips from computer pros, and interviews with girl coders. It’s meant for anyone age 10 and up.
Research shows that 66 percent of girls between ages 6 and 12 say they're interested in computer science. But around adolescence, interest drops off in a major way—only 32 percent of 13- to 17-year-old girls are interested in computer programs, and only 4 percent of college freshmen are. That's a problem, because by 2020, there will be more than 1.2 million available jobs in tech—and at this rate, women in the U.S. are on track to fill only 3 percent of them.
Saujani thinks that by showing young girls that coding is cool and important and not just for boys, we can reverse that trend. Since 2012, Girls Who Code has reached 40,000 girls in 50 states through its summer camps and other programs—but interest exceeds capacity, and not every girl can make it to a Girls Who Code camp or club. These books are meant to help bring coding to them. After she finishes reading the Girls Who Code book, a girl will understand many of the basics of coding, and be ready to take on a training program online or in person.
Preorder both books for the girl in your life at Amazon, Target, or Barnes & Noble. They'll both be released on August 22.
