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The boy who knew too much: a child prodigy

This is the true story of scientific child prodigy, and former baby genius, Ainan Celeste Cawley, written by his father. It is the true story, too, of his gifted brothers and of all the Cawley family. I write also of child prodigy and genius in general: what it is, and how it is so often neglected in the modern world. As a society, we so often fail those we should most hope to see succeed: our gifted children and the gifted adults they become. Site Copyright: Valentine Cawley, 2006 +

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Book review of X events the Collapse of Everything by John Casti

Today, one of my book reviews has appeared in the Star newspaper. This one is for X Events - the Collapse of Everything by John Casti. It is notable in that it is a negative review of a  book, and I did wonder whether it was going to be published at all. Well done to the Star for doing so.

A couple of things got changed in the editing. One sentence has been misunderstood. I was trying to say at one point that anyone who reads newspapers or online news would not need this book. Somehow that got changed to someone who "only reads newspapers or online news", would have a need for this book. That is not what I was saying at all. So, it seems that someone misunderstood my intention there.

One sentence got removed entirely. It was my most critical remark. Perhaps, as a family newspaper they want to preserve as upbeat a tone as possible. None of my truly critical remarks, in any article, have ever made it into print, in any section of the newspaper. (My excised sentence included the phrase: "a rather lame attempt to repackage something old as something new").

Please have a read. Let me know what you think, if you have a moment. Thank you.

http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2012/8/19/lifebookshelf/11767744&sec=lifebookshelf

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.) 

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Monday, June 18, 2012

A review of “Century Rain”, by Alastair Reynolds


Tagline: A brilliant book of ideas, for those interested in the interstellar possibilities of the future.

Earth is dead. Or is it?

Three hundred years in the future, Verity Auger, an archaeologist, explores the ice covered ruins of Paris, in search of invaluable relics, such as newspapers, hoping to recover clues to the past of a now uninhabited  - and uninhabitable - Earth.

Meanwhile, it seems, private detective and part time musician, Wendell Floyd,  begins to investigate what might be a murder, in an oddly unfamiliar 1959 Paris.

There is an accident, on Verity’s mission and someone dies. Verity faces a courtroom and many years in prison. Before she can be put on trial, she is whisked away by a secret governmental organization and offered a deal: the charges will be dropped, if she accepts a clandestine mission – to travel through a wormhole, through space-time, to an earlier version of Earth, that still lives, to recover some documents of great value. The archaeologist is being offered the chance to see a living Earth: Paris in 1959. She takes it – and the adventure begins. The only thing is, if she had known what she was getting into, she might not have accepted at all.

This second Earth is strange. Nothing is quite what it seems. The reader is led to question the nature of reality and of what it means to be alive – and “real”. These ponderings emerge naturally, in response to a story that, in some way, tries to be a whole library of books at once – so multiple are the genres to be found in its pages – from space opera, to alternate history, to time travel, to noir detective story, to science fiction thriller and spy novel. This pot pourri could easily have led to an inchoate mess, but Alastair Reynolds handles all these elements adroitly, to create a well told story that pulls its many threads together expertly.

1950s Paris is imagined in fine detail. It is not quite the Paris our history tells us of, but it is Paris all the same. Reynolds seems very much in love with the city and his writing is at its best, in the Parisian passages. He writes with a kinaesthetic prose, capturing movement, action and texture, alike, with great precision and evocativeness. He also litters his writing with vivid images, that light up in the mind’s eye. This is unexpected from a science fiction writer, who are often strong on ideas, but weak on prose. Reynolds is a writer who, at times, plays with words and images in a way which delights the mind – though I must point out that he doesn’t always do so. There is promise, though, in the writing, of what might come in later works.

Oddly, for a hard SF writer, Reynolds’ future seems more thinly described. There is something insubstantial about it, as if he didn’t quite devote the imaginative resources to it, that he could have done. Yet, there are interesting themes at play. There are two major divisions of humanity, in the 23rd Century: the Threshers, who live in near Earth space and reject nanotechnology because it once destroyed all life on Earth – and the Slashers, who are nanotechnologically augmented superhuman beings and live in the outer solar system. The rivalry of these two groups provides the political backdrop to the future. Their disparate natures, gives us two visions of what might become of humanity. It also gives us one of the central tensions in the story. Can these essentially incompatible philosophies of life, get along...or will there be a war?

Reynolds is very good at creating a sense of mystery. He scatters clues as to what is really going on, throughout the story – but, cleverly, tends to suggest wrong interpretations of these clues, so that the reader is constantly being wrong-footed about what is really going on. This is a highly effective way of heightening the mystery and absorbing the reader, into every detail of the complex unfolding plot. Reynolds most definitely has a future as a detective story writer, should he ever wish to abandon science fiction. He demonstrates here an ability to handle many genres well. He is a highly competent story teller.

Where Reynolds is weak, however, is human emotion. His writing is a beautiful, intricate, confection that enchants the mind – but chills the heart. Though he tries to inject romance into the story towards the end, it comes off as cold and dead. There is no life, in that “love” he speaks of. Somehow, he has failed to capture what real human feeling is like. He is unable to make the reader feel for the characters or their situation and when people die it is very much “So what?”. This weakens the book, for though it is a very interesting story, well told, the reader is never moved by it: it is never an emotional experience.

Then there is the matter of characterization. This is somewhat effective for the two central characters, but almost everyone else in the book is a bit of a cardboard cut out. One cannot care for people who are not people, but just story functions. Reynolds’ imagination seems more powerful when it concerns events, concepts and things, than it does when it concerns people. Perhaps this relates to his real life background as an astrophysicist. His life has been more one of ideas, than of people – and it shows in his writing – the people are not quite all there, but the ideas are great.

Century Rain is a successful marriage of noir detective story and science fiction novel. However, it is not without its flaws – but these are not flaws of story telling, but more flaws, perhaps, in the writer’s understanding of feeling and its portrayal. Alastair Reynolds is a great science fiction writer, who is better than many more well known writers, in the actual quality of his writing. Yet, he has limits in the areas of characterization and human feeling. I think that his best future books will be ones that focus on his strengths, for I am not sure he has it in him, to fully address these weaknesses.

Century Rain is clever, complex and fun to read. Enjoy it for its abundance of ideas, its many surprises and its careful plotting. It is a long book but one that is well worth your while – for it takes you to worlds you have never seen and prompts you to consider just where we might be heading, in the real world – and whether we really want to ever get there.

Please note: This review was written as a sample, for a national newspaper that wanted to see how I might write book reviews. Given that the book was released some years ago, however, they decided it was too old to publish. So, I didn't want to waste the effort I put into writing it. Thus, I have posted it here. I hope some of you enjoyed it.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.) 

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Saturday, April 21, 2012

The decline of books.


Recently, I have noticed something rather worrisome about what is on the bookshelves of modern bookshops. It is not what you might think. I am not concerned about violence, or explicitness...for they are in no more generous supply than they ever used to be – no, what concerns me is just what kind of books are available. If you look at the teen section of a bookshop, or, indeed, the science fiction/fantasy section of many bookshops, you might be as disturbed as I was to note that almost every book seems to be about vampires or werewolves, or other supernatural phenomenon. 

It is really very boring.

In fact, that is just what Ainan said recently, looking at the selection of books available, in the bookshop we were in: “How boring.” Now, this is from a young boy, who has read much less than me – yet even he is tired of the repetitiousness of the offerings available.

This is a very real problem – one of a lack of imagination, and creativity in publishing. It seems that just because Harry Potter and The Twilight Series have done so well, that publishers want to copy these two series, hoping for similar success – so they “greenlight” anything about the supernatural, particularly vampires and werewolves – and refuse to publish anything about anything new, for that might be seen as “untried” and “risky”. The result is bookshelves heaving with vampires and werewolves – and nothing else. It is unutterably dull. I, for one, couldn’t find a single book on those shelves that I would want to buy and read. So, I didn’t. Neither  did my son. We left empty handed – because there really was no choice, every book was basically telling the same story – a love story around vampires and werewolves – in different words. How crass.

Modern publishing is at risk of killing itself off, ironically, through the avoidance of risk. By not trying to bring new works to the market, with novel ideas, styles or perspectives, but repeatedly pushing the same limited kinds of works, they are creating a market without any real choice. If there is no choice, eventually there will be no readers.

Now, I can’t be sure that this is just a publisher's problem. Perhaps the bookshops are being selective in what they order and are targeting werewolves and vampires and the like...yet somehow I doubt it. You see, when I was a teenager there were no stories about werewolves and vampires – apart from Bram Stoker and the shelves seemed to have much greater variety. Modern publishing has become a business in which everyone is trying to do and sell the same product. They are “playing safe” to the point of self-destruction.

I don’t really buy books anymore, from my local bookshops. Well, I do...but only very rarely. Certainly, the fiction shelves are not as interesting as they were when I was a child. Looking at them, you would swear there was only one story and one writer in the whole world – because every book is much the same. There is no longer any reason to read anymore, because there is no longer anything new to read, being presented to us. I do hope this is just a publishing problem and not because every writer on Earth thinks it clever to write about vampires and werewolves. In fact, the problem has become so obvious that it really is dishonest to call the sections in the bookshops “Teen” or “Science Fiction and Fantasy”...they should just be called “Vampires and Werewolves” – because that is basically all that is on offer.

It is no surprise to me that bookshops are closing down. Readers no longer have interesting books to buy. They just have the same old same old. So why should they buy anything in these moribund bookshops? As long as publishers compete to be the same as each other, producing the same products, by different authors (who might as well have the same name), then readers will no longer have anything worthwhile to read, or any reason to frequent a bookshop.

Publishing will only thrive if there is true diversity. Once publishers start behaving in a herd like manner, that is the end of the road for them. Unfortunately, they became a herd long ago...so I don’t see much future for them, unless they change soon.

Let us have bookshelves teeming with variety. Let vampires and werewolves become a rarity again – because, frankly, I am beyond bored with them. If you are writing a vampire and werewolf book, please stop writing now. The world has more than enough of them. In fact, why don’t the world’s publishers start UNpublishing vampire and werewolf books? That would be progress, because then they would have to publish something else.

Future eras will laugh at the “culture” we produced over the last decade or so. They will laugh at the advent of idiocy so revealed. In fact, we might one day be known as the time of vampires and werewolves. It might be one of the most obvious facts about our culture in this time. How stupid is that?

Everyone reading this can do something to encourage more variety in the books stocked on bookstore shelves – simply stop buying vampire and werewolf stories. Eventually publishers will get the message and start publishing something else....hopefully lots of different things. As for me, I have only bought myself two fiction books in the last year. The first turned out to be rather unreadable, and ineptly written. The second I have yet to try.  I will comment more later.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

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Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Echoes of Alexandria.

Once, there was a great library that held virtually all of the world’s knowledge. Barbarian thugs burnt it down.* That library was, of course, Alexandria.

Today, I learnt that, amongst all the buildings set afire by Britain’s own barbarian thugs, were two libraries – and a College. Gloucester Library and the former Salford library were both set ablaze by Britain’s rioters. So, too, the Gloucester College of Art and Technology, has been burnt to the ground.

Now, assuming the choice of these buildings was deliberate, it does say something telling about the psyche (such as they have them), of the rioters. They choose to destroy that which they are personally unable to appreciate, presumably through a combined lack of intelligence and interest in learning. These thugs are typically uneducated, largely by choice, since the opportunity of a free education was given to them all. That they should burn libraries shows that they resent the written word, as something that somehow offends their “sensibilities”. To them, perhaps, the written word and books represent a kind of oppression: it is something that caused them great difficulty in school and required effort (which is the last thing they want to make), so, when faced with an innocent, vulnerable library, their first response is to set light to it. Watching all those books burn, no doubt fills them with glee. If these rioters had their way, there would not be a single book left in the world – and then everyone would be equal in their ignorance. The rioters are unable, intellectually, to “level up” with everyone else, so they would rather level everyone else down to them, through depriving them of the books, the rioters always resented.

That Gloucester College of Art and Technology should have been set afire is also very revealing of their mentality. It seems as if they blame the education establishment, in some way, for their own predicament. Perhaps they think that the education “system”, prevented them from gaining qualifications, by some trickery, or deviousness. In truth, of course, they prevented themselves from gaining from education by making no effort within it.

The rioters’ choice of two libraries and a College to burn, is evidence that we are really dealing with barbarians here, in the truest sense of the world. Although they grew up within British culture, they are not part of it – they have their own subculture, a barbarian world with no place in our own. There are only three choices when dealing with these people: reform, exile, or containment. Of course, there is the fourth alternative: death – and perhaps it might even have to come to that, if this blight upon the British people persists in mayhem, violence, looting, arson and, I now understand, murder (three and counting).

The means must be found to reform the character, nature and outlook of these thugs. If the means cannot be found (and, in fact, it would be difficult to educate such bestial people) then we should look to long term containment of them, until such time as they are no longer a threat to society. As for exile: who would have them? Would it be fair to inflict them on anyone? If, however, a rioter should be an immigrant from another country, a fair punishment would be for any visa, or indeed citizenship of Britain, to be revoked, and for them to be sent back to their country of origin – with a permanent ban on any return. Anyone who strives to destroy society – as these thugs have – deserves to be exiled from society, forever. I intend to write a fuller approach to dealing with them, in another post.

Given that two libraries and a College have been set alight, it would seem wise if the police took particular care to set a guard at the leading libraries in the UK. I cannot, for instance, imagine the loss to the nation, were the British Library to be set on fire – or indeed, any of the major University libraries, containing, sometimes, millions of books each.

The rioters have anger. They are evil, in the sense of not seeming to know what good is, or not caring about it, at least. All that they lack, is intelligent guidance. Should there arise among them, an intelligent leader able to guide them, so as to do maximal damage, then Britain will be in a very grave situation, indeed. It is fortunate that, so far, they appear to be as stupid as they are thoughtless of others. Perhaps, in a way, we should be thankful for their lack of seeming effort in the education system. Had they learnt more about the world, they would be a greater danger to it.

Then again, it must be said, I never thought I would live through times, in which people set libraries alight. When I was a young boy, in school, the idea that anyone would actually burn down the greatest library in the world, Alexandria, destroying the heritage of humanity, appalled me. I couldn’t understand how anyone would so lack appreciation of knowledge, art, literature, culture, science and history, that they would be able to do that. Now, however, Britain has a bred a generation of thugs, able to do just that: burn libraries, destroy knowledge, wipe out culture (given a chance). The burning of libraries, often signals the fall of civilizations and the ending of Old Worlds. Let us halt the advance of these particular barbarians and not be fearful of dealing with them in the manner they deserve – before their violent creed becomes the new norm, for a fractured British society. Personally, I would rather see the rioters burn, than our libraries. The real danger, however, in the present British political and social system, is that the rioters will be treated too gently, too kindly and too respectfully ever to teach them to be civilized. These rioters are a threat to Britain as a civilization. They should, therefore, be approached as an existential threat and dealt with, with an appropriate and punitive level of harshness. They should come to learn that Britain will not tolerate barbarians on its soil – not now and not ever (again).

* There are four possible historical culprits for the partial or complete destruction of Alexandria's library. I am not going to disentangle them here - except to say that although not supposedly all barbarians, their attitude to knowledge was certainly barbaric (except for Caesar, who might have burnt it by accident!)

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.


To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)


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Sunday, March 04, 2007

A child prodigy's father: what people think

We went shopping for more books, yesterday. This time it was a University bookshop.

We made a comical entrance: one baby in a pram and one young boy by our side, my wife and I entered this sanctuary of collegiate studiousness. I felt, at once, our incongruity. The shop was filled with students, of University age, and some who were older. Tiarnan and Ainan were the only non-adults in the shop.

The shop had been recommended by the Gifted Education Branch Officer, as stocking a range of University texts, among which might be something to interest Ainan. It seemed to cover all the major subjects of a University and even had a Chemistry section. It was not long before Ainan was ensconced beneath its shelving, a pile of Chemistry texts growing by his side as I took them down from the upper shelves for him to look at.

The reaction to Ainan from strangers was much more stark, this time, than in Kinokuniya. I feel it was, perhaps, because the people who shopped in that shop would be much more aware of the difficulties of the material, in question, than a typical shopper at an average bookshop - because they weren't studying it.

As they passed Ainan, they would look down at this small boy, with the big books open in front of him, and they would pause, momentarily in their movement, as if struck by what they saw. They would look down at him, at the books, then up at me, and on. They would say nothing, but their faces said everything.

It was worse when we came to the counter to pay. I set the books down and the staff began scanning them. Then I turned to Ainan beside me, whose head barely reached the level of the counter and asked: "What do you think of this one, Ainan?" It was a specialist University Chemistry text. I asked because, having seen the price rang up - seventy-nine dollars - I wanted to make sure of his choice.

The cashier had stopped in her scanning when I had turned to Ainan, as she understood who the book was for. She just stared down at him in silence. She was frozen still. I ignored her and continued to speak to Ainan.

"Is it good?"

He gave a minute nod.

"OK then..." I turned back to the assistant, who still stared at Ainan, unable to comprehend the relative size of book and boy. Slowly, she picked up her scanner and turned back to the task of scanning books, but her mind wasn't on it anymore, but on Ainan.

Ainan then did something to give her greater worries. He went behind the counter, beside her, and squatted down and started examining whatever was unseen (from my point of view) back there. He smiled broadly, as he did so. In other words, he behaved as a curious child might. This only exacerbated the contrast between the choice of book and the ostensible age of the child.

The cashier said nothing, but just stared at Ainan, quite unable to take all this in.

I called him out from there, and picked up my books.

I asked her when the shop was open. "Everyday...but closed on Sundays." She replied, automatically...but again unsure of what to make of the implication that we would be regulars.

I felt her eyes on our backs, as I left.

Interestingly, Ainan had attracted much the same kind of silent gaze, at NUS High School...but more of that, perhaps, in another post.

(If you would like to read more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and three months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, three, and Tiarnan, 13 months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

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posted by Valentine Cawley @ 9:56 AM  0 comments

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