Ada and the Supercomputer

“Doris Dobi captures what it feels like to fall in love with ideas—a moving story of curiosity, resilience, and girls who dare to dream big.”
—Ken Ono, Commonwealth Professor of Mathematics at the University of Virginia

What do you do when the world stops making sense? If you’re Ada Wood, you build a supercomputer.

Thirteen-year-old Ada has never met a problem she couldn't take apart and put back together. Then her mother dies, and Ada is left with the one problem she can’t solve. 

So when all the talk about artificial intelligence plants a wild idea in her head, she runs with it: If a supercomputer can answer anything, maybe it can calculate the meaning of life. Ada decides to build one. 

A real one. From scratch. In her basement.

All she needs is her best friend Max, her sharp-eyed aunt Lizzie, a very good dog named Falkor, and a crash course in everything from binary code to one of the greatest unsolved problems in math.

But underneath all the wires and circuits hums a quieter question. The one about her mom. The one Ada can’t say out loud. 

Building the machine might be the hardest thing she’s ever tried. It might also be the thing that finally brings her family back together.

A big-hearted adventure about curiosity, friendship, and the discovery that broken pieces, put back together, can be stronger than ever.