Despite high interest in learning to program, I was confused and bored in my first (FORTRAN) programming course. Browsing at the local bookstore I found 'The FORTRAN Coloring Book' and took it home. Kaufman's approach unlocked some kind of door for me, and the effort of going to find my own resources did as well. Forty years on, 'The Fortran Coloring Book' sits on the shelf next to 'Software Tools in Pascal' (same bookstore a few months later) and many of the other books listed in this thread (e.g. TAOCP, SICP, UPE, OSTEP.)
You would probably appreciate How to Design and Build Your Own Custom Robot by David L. Heiserman. I don't think the text is available online, but you can find it very cheaply for sale. I remember checking this book out from the library a few times when I was a kid.
Microelectronics and the Personal Computer Scientific American 237, no. 3 (1977)(Sep.): 230-244. scans at https://www.digibarn.com/collections/books/xerox-parc-1970-8...
Programming Your Own Computer, in Science Year, The World Book Annual Science Supplement, 183-195. (Chicago, Ill., 1978).
Fortran Coloring Book https://archive.org/details/9780262610261
BASIC Cookbook https://archive.org/details/Basic_Cookbook_1978_Tab_Books
and later, in 1984, the Smalltalk-80: The Language and Its Implementation (the Blue Book) http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/BlueBook/Bluebook....
If you think you see a theme here, you would be right.