It looks it would be easier to go through The Little Schemer first before pick up SICP, so here we go.
atom is the most basic building block, it could be a letter, a string of digits, a string of characters. Examples:
a
1492
atom
*abc$
list is one or more atom enclosed by parentheses. Examples:
(atom)
(atom turkey or)
((atom turkey) or)
All atoms and all lists are S-expressions. For example, there are three S-expressions in the following example :
(((how) are) ((you) (doing so)) far)
They are ((how) are),((you) (doing so)) and far.
The null S-expression:
()