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I took CS61A with one of the authors of the book, Brian Harvey (CS61A is the introductory computer science course here at Berkeley). While I loved the class and enjoyed having Harvey as my professor, I found Simply Scheme a bit too limited and simplistic. SICP covers more material in greater detail.

http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/

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Agreed, though SS stands out by including a full-page photograph of Alonzo Church. :-)

From Simply Scheme's preface:

"The only trouble with SICP is that it was written for MIT students, all of whom love science and are quite comfortable with formal mathematics. Also, most of the students who use SICP at MIT have already learned to program computers before they begin. As a result, many other schools have found the book too challenging for a beginning course. We believe that everyone who is seriously interested in computer science must read SICP eventually. Our book is a prequel; it's meant to teach you what you need to know in order to read that book successfully."

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