Girl Code: Gaming, Going Viral, and Getting It Done by Andrea Gonzales (review)

Take two smart girls with strong voices and creativity, arm them with a bit of coding experience, and voilà, you get something as brilliantly funny and sharp as the viral game Tampon Run. In this nonfiction account of the experience, the girls take turns in describing how they first met and became friends and how a small project at a Girls Who Code summer camp became a popular hit that continues to have sturdy recognizability. The game itself is a side scroller where instead of shooting, the protagonist throws tampons at her opponents, restocking as necessary to save the day. It’s simple but highly effective, and it also does the work the girls hoped of forcing people to talk about and think about menstruation. The occasional code-heavy passages best suit a readership with significant computer savvy, but most of the writing will appeal to novices as well. Readers seeking a factual title about enterprising teens creating solutions to social problems will find Andrea and Sophie’s story inspirational, and it’s also accessible enough to get them thinking about their own activism. An extensive appendix provides guidelines for starting to code and offers some online resources.