Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The other positive reviews are astounding and it's obvious people haven't seen other "Python for Kids" books on the market. Compared to all the others, even much older titles, this book is sparse and lacking in substance. Please don't waste your money on this title and buy another one such as "Coding Games in Python" (for a similar level of graphic design and cuteness) or something like "Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python", now in its 4th edition and with a level of depth about 10X higher than this "Creative Coding" title. First, the good about this book: the illustrations are sharp and the author goes through a checklist to give an introduction to most of the key coding concepts. It's just a "check the box, yup, I covered that topic" treatment, though, and there's ZERO depth. Check out the attached images that show the sections on Loops and Lists. Second, the bad: --Too much filler (out of 130 pages, there are 10 pages of section headers, another 20 where there's barely any text, only screenshots, and overall waaaay too much white space on each page). You could read all the actual words in this book in less than an hour. --Too little depth; no one could use this book successfully to teach cosing because if you don't know Python, you're not going to be able to help your child with just this book. If you *do* know Python already, you'll have to supplement so much that you might as well just make up your own course or use another book. BETTER ALTERNATIVES: I've gotten quite a collection of Python books over the years to teach my 4 kids. I've even done book reviews at my Learn Richly blog and I bought two recent books (this "Creative Coding" one and "Coding Games in Python") to freshen up my collection and compare the older books I have to these new titles. So, given all that, here are the better options: GRAPHICALLY RICH: "Coding games in Python" has the same level of beautiful color art as "Creative Coding in Python" but has 210 pages instead of 130 and then puts 2X the information on each page. It gives TONS of coding examples and then tells you what each piece of code does. It's by FAR better than "Creative Coding". It was just published in late 2018. DEEP AND USEFUL: While not as colorful as the two recent books, there are two older titles I highly recommend if you actually want your child to lear Python: "Teach Your Kids to Code" by Dr. Bryson Payne OR "Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python" by Al Sweigart Either of the above will help kids or beginner adults to actually learn the theory and practical use of Python.