Hacker News Books

Off the top of my head

Rosie Revere Engineer and others from the same author

The Fairy Bell Sisters

Magic Treehouse

Junie B Jones

Princess in Black

Ling and Ting series

The Golly Sisters

Sisters (comic book)

Harold and the Purple Crayon

It's a shame that few people mention the book that seemed to inspire this genre: "Harold and the Purple Crayon" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_and_the_Purple_Crayon) -- originally published in 1955. It's still a classic in my mind. Max & the Magic Marker and Crayon Physics are also excellent.

Harold and the Purple Crayon is the first book I ever read in my life. Now I draw, paint, and program - and when I do these activities, it is all literally an attempt to harness the power Harold showed me as a child.

Harold and the purple crayon is a great book that introduces programming concepts, but it doesn't beat you over the head with any computer lingo.

This book is a neat idea and the illustrations look cool, but here is one concern:
Why name the main character Ruby? Good kids books are timeless and ruby the programming language is not, and it dates the book too. Why associate any programming language in particular with programming concepts like sequences or sets? That seems like a message from "learn to code" school. So does DRY to a lesser extent.

- Good Night, Moon

- The Runaway Bunny

- Harold and the Purple Crayon

- Grandfather Twilight (for slightly older children)

- Sandra Boynton books

- Max's Breakfast (and other books)

- I Read Signs (Tana Hoban; other books by her also quite good)

- Go! Go! Go! Stop! (Cherise Mericle Harper)

- Little Pea (Amy Krouse Rosenthal)

- Trucks, My Car (and other Byron Barton books)

- The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle; some other books by this author are also good)

- Roadwork (Sally Sutton; also in the same vein by the illustrator Brian Lovelock: Demolition, Flight of the Honey Bee, The Rain Train).

Many others come to mind, but these are well-loved.