Yang, Gene Luen

Creepy birds, locked doors, a crazy janitor. Stately Academy looks more like a haunted house than a school—at least to twelve-year-old newcomer and narrator Hopper. But she soon finds a like-minded ally in basketball star Eni. With a crucial assist from Hopper's earrings (which are shaped like 7s), Eni discovers that Stately's strange birds are actually robots whose eyes display binary numbers. Nosing around campus, Hopper and Eni then find a programmable turtle robot and pages of code. A cliffhanger ending (which comes a bit too soon) leaves the new friends—and readers—facing a do-or-die programming challenge. It's an inspired—and inspiring