Hi Linda!
The best way to get started is with React Native Express (http://reactnativeexpress.com/)! We covered most of the material from that and more in our workshop at React Europe last year, and it's all available on YouTube: youtube.com/watch
Another good resource is the "Full Stack React Native" book (https://www.fullstackreact.com/react-native/) because it guides you through several small apps. There's no substitute for this kind of practice!
When you're comfortable with the basics, be sure to learn how to use the Animated API (facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/animations.h…). For gestures, dig in to react-native-gesture-handler (https://github.com/kmagiera/react-native-gest ure-handler).
Routing and navigation is an area with a lot of active development in React Native at the moment. This is how you go from one screen to another, add a navigation back and the gesture to swipe back between screens, tab bars, etc. The approaches are: 1) re-build the navigation behavior from iOS and Android in React Native with JavaScript and React Native primitives 2) use the existing platform APIs for this. You can read more about the tradeoffs at https://reactnavigation.org/docs/pitch.html.
I hope this helps!