In the Key of Code

Aimee Lucido is a software engineer by day, writer by night. She did her undergrad degree in computer science at Brown and her MFA in writing for children and young adults at Hamline University. She spends her nine-to-five working at Uber on the Android rider-to-driver team (splitting her time between software engineering and being a diversity & inclusion advocate), and her five-to-nine pursuing her dream of being a writer. In her free time she writes crossword puzzles and performs musical improv with her team Flash Mob Musical. She lives in San Francisco.

In the US, more open-ended, hip-hop-inspired “novels” in verse have been in circulation for some time. In the Key of Code (Walker) is a highlight in that relatively recent tradition. Aimee Lucido’s debut is told in the form of poems, liberally littered with computer code and musical terminology.It is a daring exercise in form that carries its story very well. New girl Emmy, 12, is the unmusical child of musicians, and starting school in San Francisco. As she navigates the mean-girl social codes and a tense home life, coding club becomes an unlikely sanctuary. But her new friendship with Abigail is fraught with tension, and their amazing computer science teacher Ms Delaney is more often absent than not.You might not have thought that the words “PUB-lic STAT-ic voidmain string BRACK-et BRACK-et ARGS” could bring a computer layperson to tears, but they did, as this uncommon book reached its crescendo.