In 2018, Scotland puts its young people in the spotlight, celebrating their talents, contributions and creating new opportunities for them to shine. As part of the Year of Young People, with the support of EventScotland, we’ve been working with youngsters aged 8-14 who live in and around Craigmillar, Edinburgh. They were born not just in the UK but also in Poland, Oman and Indonesia. Together they’ve co-designed events exploring the concept of Freedom and named them Codename F.

Our Young Programmers are Atika Al-azari, Bruce Banner, India Cierpikowska, Laeticia Danica, Martyna Gorska, Joe Johnson, Leigh Milligan, Ahmed Nalbant, Laurence Philpot, Unmol Singh and Jonathan Watton.

Meet the Young Programmers

Who better to tell you all about their strand than the young people themselves…

Discover the Codename F event strand

You can find a full list of Codename F events for all ages on the Book Festival website here.

The events explore a range of topics including the environment, gender politics and surveillance, featuring picture books, discussions and drop-in activities.

Read the Young Programmers’ Reviews

Two of our young programmers, Joe and India, agreed to write us reviews of some of their favourite books from their events. So read on for some reading recommendations…

A beautifully illustrated book that teaches a good lesson in the end. This is a great adventure story featuring adventurer Erin and her dog.
(Joe on The Secret of Black Rock by Joe Todd-Stanton)

Overall this book was really interesting! The book is about a boy called Jamie who meets a girl called Mara on a beach, and they become good friends. My favourite part of the book was when Jamie, Mara and Django (Mara’s dog) went on a big adventure – the friends sailed 65 kilometres to St Kilda on a small boat. I would recommend this book to all adventure lovers. I really enjoyed it and I hope you will too! I would rate this book 4.5/5 stars.
(India on To the Edge of the World by Julia Green)