A 9-year-old boy named Truman who gives up on making friends to build his own computer buddy is the central character in a new children’s picture book written and illustrated by ACS K-12 technology teacher Rhapsody Hahn-Chaney. Hahn-Chaney self-published “You Can’t Talk to My Friend, Cody” as a book that is now sold on Amazon. The book aims to teach children from five to nine years old that people are more important then computers and that coding is an amazing tool that should be shared with children around the world.
Hahn-Chaney was inspired to write the book while taking an online Python computer language class last summer with the New Jersey Institute of Technology. “Learning Python was difficult and as a study technique I pictured myself teaching Python to a student and it slowly evolved into a story,” Hahn-Chaney said. Along the way, she decided to turn her story into a 32-page picture book that she self-published through Kindle Direct Publishing. The book is available as an eBook or as a soft-cover book.
This past semester, Hahn-Chaney took the lessons she learned in self-publishing and shared them with the 11th and 12th grade students in her Computer Technology class. The students worked alone or in teams of two to write and illustrate their own children’s books and then self-published them to be available on Amazon as well.
Hahn-Chaney also read her book aloud to K-5 students during their computer classes in May. “The important lesson in my book is that computers can’t replace people,” Hahn-Chaney said. “Computers are a great tool, but they can’t replace the human connection and making friends with people who share our interests.” In the book, Truman spends more time with his computer buddy, who he names Cody, than with his classmates, but soon learns that he can build a friendship with a girl in his science class by sharing their common interest in computers and coding.
Hahn-Chaney will be teaching a one-week STEM Camp at ACS this summer that will focus on teaching students how to create a website. She plans to create a website for her new book, and use that project as a template to teach the students in her class how to build a website. Hahn-Chaney also plans to work this summer on adding educational activities, like puzzles and mazes, to the back of her book to increase it to over 73 pages so it can be published as a hard-cover book in the future.
CLICK HERE to view or purchase Hahn-Chaney’s book on Amazon.