Review by Mark Kantrowitz:

Brian Harvey and Matthew Wright
"Simply Scheme: Introducing Computer Science"
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1994. 583 pages. 
ISBN 0-262-08226-8. $49.95.

This book is ideal for students with little or no previous exposure to
programming. The book is designed to be used before SICP (the authors
call it a SICP "prequel"), and makes Scheme fun by sheltering the
students from potentially confusing technical details. Unlike Pascal
or C, the emphasis is on ideas, not obscure matters of syntax and
arbitrary rules of style.  High schools who have shied away from using
Scheme because they found SICP to be too challenging should consider
using this book instead.

The text gradually and gently introduces students to some of the key
concepts of programming in Scheme. It starts off with functions and
function composition and continues with the notion of functions as
data (first-class functions) and programs that write programs
(higher-order functions).  Since the complexity of the language is
hidden, students can get involved in some of the more interesting and
fun aspects of the language earlier than in other texts.  Then the
book progresses through the more complicated concepts of lambda,
recursion, data abstraction and procedural abstraction, and concludes
with sequential techniques, but with careful attention to topics
students often find difficult.  There are five chapters on recursion
alone! There's also a pitfalls section at the end of most chapters to
help students recognize and avoid common errors.

The book uses several programs as examples, including a tic-tac-toe
program, a pattern matcher, a miniature spreadsheet, and a simple
database program.  Source code for the programs is available by
anonymous ftp from anarres.cs.berkeley.edu:pub/scheme/, or for $10 on
IBM or Macintosh diskettes from the publisher.