Learn to Code with Mostly Books - and win prizes for you and your school!

In 1955, members of the Tech Model Railroad Club at United States University MIT were asked to turn off the power if they were going to "hack" any element of the electrical system to prevent a fuse blowing. The railway layouts were laid out on large boards of plywood or polystyrene - and often gaining access involved hacksawing, or 'hacking' from underneath to tinker with the set.

And thus the word 'hack was born.

Margaret Hamilton, Director of the
Software Engineering Division at
MIT during the Apollo Programme

Members of the railway club were also programmers. They wrote one of the earliest computer games, and the MIT Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, went on to become a leader in developments in computer programming. They have a long and proud history of being in the forefront of software development. They developed the software that sent humans to the Moon (creating leadership in technology that repaid the US economy many times over the cost of the entire Apollo Programme). 

So it's fitting that they also developed Scratch - a programming environment which is perfect for anyone wanting to learn how to code safely, quickly and having lots of fun to boot.

Scratch is a bit like Lego - you plug together coloured blocks on screen to quickly make games, tell stories - anything really. It's free to download - and you can even build a Scratch program using just a browser.

We love coding at Mostly Books (I help run a code club at a local primary school) and we're really excited to tell you about a competition we're running over half-term.

Usborne books have producing coding books for kids for over 30 years - and the latest two books are fantastic additions to the range. 'Lift the Flap Computers and Coding' is a fantastic introduction to coding for young children, and 'Coding for Beginners using Scratch' (out next week) allows children to start writing their own games in a very short time.

Anyone coming in and taking a look at the books over half-term can enter - for free - a competition to win £50 of Usborne Books.

But that's not all. We want to see what you've written!

Send us an example or description of a coding project you've built with Scratch (or another programming language such as Python) and we'll enter you into another coding competition - and your school can win £50 of Usborne Books as well. This competition will run until the end of November.

It can be something from the book. It could be a bouncing ball. It could be a programme to land on the Moon, or something like that first ever computer game 'SpaceWar!'.

Send us a link to your code (or just a screenshot). But do something. But we can guarantee it'll be fun, you'll learn loads.

Come into Mostly Books to learn more - and get coding!

3 4 Friday - Excitement, Extravaganza and Exposing a Mystery Guest

No, no clues. You'll have to see for yourself!

Someone unexpected has appeared in our window.

At first glance, it looks very much like Father Christmas; the beard, the red clothes dusted with snow. A big fat tummy.

But we are fairly sure it is someone in disguise. If you think you can identify our mystery visitor you might win him! We have entry forms in store - all you need to do is to let us know who you think is disguised as Father Christmas. Come on down and take a look...

We think it's all to do with the annual Abingdon Extravaganza on Saturday 30 November. It’s a day-long celebration featuring a parade at 11.45am, fun in the market square all afternoon (including reindeer!) with the big Christmas lights switch-on at 5.30pm followed by a grand firework display.

All day at Mostly Books, we’re inviting you to enter our competition to win £30 of Usborne books – simply come into the shop and take part in our Christmas colouring competition. You will also be able to make a Christmas decoration that you can take home – and grab a free Usborne goodie bag whilst stocks last.

Finally, there’s a fab Christmas competition running all around town this December – the Abingdon Independent Christmas. Collect your special Christmas tree from any of the 20 shops taking part (including Mostly Books) and every time you visit one of them, you’ll get a star to stick on your Christmas tree. Collect ten stars from ten different shops – and enter a competition to win a £20 voucher from one of the shops.

So there we are – three ways to win this Christmas. And if you need some ideas, take a look at our special Christmas recommends newsletter that should have arrived last week. If gremlins or overzealous spam filters stopped you receiving it last week, you can view an online version here.

Usborne Day - everything great about children's publishing, in one publisher, on one day

We thought long and hard before getting involved in 'Usborne Day', a single day on Saturday October 5 to celebrate Usborne's 40th birthday. After all, trying to establish a random day of celebration can lead to the proverbial 'epic fail' (just ask Diageo) but in this case, the celebrations are entirely justified.

So this post is going to be unashamedly about Usborne and our special day of celebration this Saturday - including a rather special storytime. More of that in due course...

So, Usborne, a bona fide British success story. Driven by the unlikely figure of Peter Usborne, it was founded on those doughty British character traits of healthy subversiveness, a polite disrespect for the status quo, the British sense of humour and a proud history of children's publishing. Usborne have grown to be a world power, translated into over 100 languages worldwide, and most children's publishers would give the stickers from their activity books to have the reach and affection they command.

I mean, isn't this great? You go to visit Usborne's German website and see this:

Those Stephen Cartwright illustrations. The Little Yellow Duck (can you see it?). This must be what if feels like to be Mercedes or BMW ('Lesespass' means 'Reading Fun' in German incidentally - what a great word...)

A lot of this success can be put down directly to Peter himself - who (amongst many other things) was one of the founders of Private Eye. (If you are at all interested in the history of Usborne, take a look at this 40th anniversary video of Peter explaining how he started the company.). Peter's whole approach back in 1973 was to compete directly, not with other publishers, but with what he felt kids actually wanted to do in the home: read comics, magazines and watch telly.

Hence the design of the books themselves - bright, eyecatching and interactive in the genuine sense of firing up the imagination of the reader to go off and do stuff with the knowledge they've gained - and return for more.

And that's really the secret of Usborne, and it's the same answer you get from any head of any publishing house, once you strip aside the mission statements and marketing flim-flam - just publish good books...

So we are celebrating Usborne Day this Saturday, October 5, and we've tried to get creative, interactive and ensure everyone has a lot of fun. Here's what we're doing:

• Children coming into the shop on Saturday will be asked to tell us their favourite book, and  - more importantly - their *perfect* book. We want children to get creative and imagine for us the kind of amazing book which they would love to read. It might be a mash-up of a favourite author or subject, it might be a magic book or one they can enter themselves. The sky's the limit - and we'll publish the best ones on the blog!
• The first 25 entries on the day will win an instant prize of a bag of Usborne and other book-related goodies (Whilst stocks last. I think we've made up 25 bags, there might be 30 actually, we'll check)
• Everyone will go into a draw to win £40 of age-appropriate Usborne Books (courtesy of Usborne). The competition will only run for this Saturday. We're not doing 'find the duck' again, we did that for several weeks over the Summer and over 150 children entered. This is just for one day! The winner will be announced at closing time on the Saturday!
• There will be Usborne colouring to do in the children's room.

At 2pm, we have a very special guest arriving to do storytime in the shop. Local children's book review guru ReadItDaddy will be coming to the shop to read us some of his favourite stories, including a favourite Usborne tale.

The storytime is free, and everyone turning up will get entered into the draw as well.

So - we hope to see you on Saturday for some super celebrations!