Ara the Star Engineer

Komal Singh

Oct 2018 · Komal Singh

About this ebook

 

This is a STEM book and more! An inspiring, inclusive, whimsical way to learn about computers and technology from real-life trailblazers.

 

Read the book, download hands-on activities, follow learning resources. Visit the website www.arastarengineer.com for more. 

 Ara is a young girl who loves BIG numbers. She wants to count all the stars in the sky… but how? This is an upbeat adventure of Ara and her sidekick droid, DeeDee (“Beep!”). They use smarts and grit to solve a BIG problem and discover an amazing algorithm! A quest that takes them through a whirlwind of intriguing locations at Innovation Plex -- Data Centre, Ideas Lab, Coding Pods, and X-Space. Along the way, they encounter real-life women tech trailblazers of diverse backgrounds, including a Tenacious Troubleshooter, an Intrepid Innovator, a Code Commander, and a Prolific Problem Solver. They tinker-and-tailor, build-and-fail, launch-and-iterate, and in the end discover an amazing algorithm of success -- coding, courage, creativity, and collaboration (“Beeeeep!”).

Ara is making a splash with industry CEOs and best-selling kids authors.

 

“‘If she can see it, she can be it.’ With this story, girls can see leaders and be inspired to become one. A book for all ages and genders!” - Geena Davis, Founder and Chair, Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media 

Ratings and reviews

The book seems to very good. However, I'm encountering an issue and I don't know if this is because rhe book, the Goole feature "listen": the last word of the page get cut, which is very annoying. E.g., the page finishes with the words "she is calm", all we hear is "she i". That happnes all the time, not only on certain pages. Ruins the experience. :-( Anyone else is having that issue?

The book is Great! Good Goals, Great Characters and a Very Positive story. I d/l'd this book to try out the new "Read Aloud" capabilities of the Google Assistant. I tried it on my Android phone. There are a few glitches that still need to be worked out. On the first page, the background Art is a series of 1 and 0 (makes sense for a book about coding) The Assistant proceeded to read All of the 1's & 0"s , before getting to the actual text of the story. Some sections of the book were skipped altogether, other pages were read out of order and the Assistant did Not recognize most of the words that were Written in a different & more colorful font. These areas of font are attractive and highlighted and will catch the eyes of a human reader, but Google Asst. doesn't yet appreciate this type of stylized text. It's a good start, but not ready for bedtime stories yet. I'd stick to reading it to, or with your child as it could be very confusing and frustrating for a child who is learning to read.

i just finish reading the book and i had so much fun reading it. it made it more awesome to read because of the graphics and animations in it. each pages is very interesting and it has a great story line that make children or even in my age can have that little curiosity in our minds. all in all, i love it. i thank myself for purchasing it. i now have a little background about google.

About the author

 Komal Singh is a techie by day and a storyteller mom by night - one who loves coding and cupcakes, data crunching and day dreaming, pottery making and program planning.  She was inspired to write this book when a hypothesis put forth by her 4-year old daughter stunned her: “Engineers are Boys”. Singh is passionate about using technology as an enabler and an equalizer for all. She takes part in kids’ coding clubs, sits on hackathon judge panels, and volunteers with nonprofits on technology development. Komal grew up in India and studied Computer Science at Delhi University and later moved to Canada to complete her Masters’ degree in C.S from Simon Fraser University. She has worked as a software engineer with tech consulting firms and is currently an Engineering Program Manager at Google. Komal lives in Waterloo, Canada, with her husband and two little kids.