Many (many :-\) years ago, when I was young, I got a book (likely published in the 1980’s) from the children’s section of the public library that taught BASIC to kids. It was the first programming book I read, and only days after I started programming (which in turn was only hours after we got our first computer).
I distinctly remember it was not a textbook, but rather told a story of a person (the reader) who has to save princess Penelope and along the way encountered various friends (including a wizard), as well as obstacles and other stuff. The encounters involved writing a bit of code to display something on the screen (in graphics mode). I only recall the parts that drew things on screen, but I think there may have been other non-multimedia tasks like calculating stuff or whatever as well.
Some of the people and things that you encounter along the way included a pair of glasses (there was something special about them), a seagull, and a dinosaur, (and I think also a gun of some sort).
I’ve long since forgotten the title and every time I’ve tried searching for it, I’ve come up completely empty.
Does anyone know the book I’m talking about? Does anyone know what it was called or who wrote it?
(When I read that book back that, I had no idea how to pronounce her name and thought it was unusual, thinking it was /pen-e-lope/ the entire time. I had probably heard the name Penelope before, but I’d never seen it written down, nor seen the English spellings of Greek names to know of their use of long ‘e’ (e.g., Hercules). It wasn’t until years later when I saw the name Penelope written down somewhere that I suddenly flashed back to the book and realized that was her name.)
Oddly enough, between the wigeon duck (Mareca penelope) and the mythical Penelope, it seems that pronouncing it /pen-e-lop/ could have made sense, but still not /pen-e-lope/. 🤷