ARA THE STAR ENGINEER

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

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!”).

Read the book, download hands-on activities, follow further learning resources. Experience the story in immersive ways never done before!

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 four-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 master's degree in the same field 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.