> In my original book for kids I used the Eclipse IDE, but for the new book I’ve chosen IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition, which is also available for free.

I think there is a fundamental problem with learning your language if your choice in IDE is a real factor in your learning.

> But no worries, kids won’t need to learn to write FXML manually - they just drag and drop UI controls on a canvas and Scene Builder generates the FXML.

Are you really teaching them programming at this point?

The provided example jumps wildly from really basic things (and inaccurate imagery: http://www.infoq.com/resource/articles/Teaching-Kids-Java/en...). Inheritance is glossed over even though it's probably one of the most important concepts in Java next to interfaces. I spot one paragraph trying to define six vocabulary words and in the very next paragraph you're talking about memory models.

You finish up the first excerpt with a really poor analogy about manufacturing computer games.

The second excerpt is almost entirely about things that aren't really programming.

I popped open the edits and in chapter 10 you actually tell kids to go to StackOverflow if they have problems. This is definitely a book about Java, but I see very little programming.