I have not read SICP, but I have read The Little Schemer. It's my favorite programming book. If does a very good job of getting you comfortable with thinking r

I have not read SICP, but I have read The Little Schemer. It's my favorite programming book. If does a very good job of getting you comfortable with thinking recursively. It not meant to impart immediate 'practical' knowledge, and it really uses Scheme as a vehicle for teaching recursion, not the other way around. You can do the exercises in any Lisp dialect easily enough, and even in JavaScript (http://javascript.crockford.com/little.html http://javascript.crockford.com/little.html). My recommendation would be to use The Little Schemer as well as another, more practically focused book on Scheme or Lisp and work through them concurrently. Also, if you're just getting started and are going to be using Scheme, the DrScheme mini-IDE makes it very easy to get started quickly. It's part of the PLT-Scheme package: http://www.plt-scheme.org/ http://www.plt-scheme.org/.