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:
()