Girls Who Code 4

[psocoptera]

Girls Who Code 4: Spotlight on Coding Club!. Yes, I'm still reading these, although I think I never reviewed 2 or 3. This one Junie was about to return and then was like "no Mama you can read it first" so I figured I had better. Not to be all "this *is* the future liberals want" but I continue to enjoy that this next-generation-Babysitters-Club assortment of girl characters includes a Black geek, Latina jock, hijabi roboticist, lesbian fashion designer (with an adorable crush-and-first date storyline in this one), and the POV character who has anxiety/panic attack stuff going on. Like, I don't know, I guess white supremacy is winning anyways but I like that a bunch of people have been like "let's tell stories where everyone are just people and we're all friends", like, so many people tried so hard to imagine and live that better world. Sorry, that was probably more despair than anyone wanted in a middlegrade book review. Anyways it springboarded a nice chat with Junie about dating; my personal feeling is that if someone is of an age to go to the movies with a friend, that's a fine thing for them to do and I don't necessarily need to know if there are proto-romantic feelings going on or what. A lot of parenting stuff seems to assume that you're going to treat dating really differently than other socializing but, I don't know, that feels so personal, expecting to know which friends are crushes? I just remember *desperately* not wanting my parents to know that stuff about me, and honestly I'd kind of still like to pretend they didn't. Also I guess it's dumb to be thinking about my kids dating when the boot of white fascism just keeps on grinding down but, like, somehow, the trivial and the serious, the personal and the national, gotta keep flailing through it all somehow...