<p>Adora</a> Svitak | Child Writer Prodigy |</p>
<p>I guess she's a child prodigy. She's pretty smart for an 11 year old, except listening to her and reading things on her website make me think that if children were encouraged while they were younger more fervently than she wouldn't be so prodigal like.</p>
<p>blahblahblah, tell her to read some pynchon or kant and then get back to me. child prodigy my ass.</p>
<p>edit: i probably just insulted the next joyce or something</p>
<p>i heard that she does lectures too..its kinda weird. but i think the OP maybe right..if we let kids find something they loved, instead of pressuring them to try all things and instead of convincing them that such and such subject is what they ought to love, kids might be prodigies. of course, there might not be.</p>
<p>I definitely don't think she's a prodigy. Now Sidis, he was a prodigy. She writes a lot, which is great, but her writing isn't unbelievable for an 11 year old. When I was her age I read 200 pages a day and wrote like that, both poems and narratives. The website gives the age when she started to type, to read, and to write and presents them as impressive, but that was about the norm or maybe slightly earlier than the norm at my (public Montessori) elementary school. Kids today learn to type a bit earlier than most of us did. I'm not trying to be down on her but I'm just saying that while she certainly seems to be a smart girl, it's a big stretch to call her a prodigy. That word should be reserved for very, very exceptional children.</p>
<p>Oh, I don't think that she's a real prodigy by any means, but she is fairly smart for 11. Then again, I think all of us were pretty smart at 11, and if we had been given the same media attention we all would have been called "prodigies". (Whatever that word really means.)</p>
<p>LOl, her credentials aren't particularly impressive. I think I beat/matched everything except for the tv spot and the published work...</p>
<p><em>writes the next great American novel</em></p>
<p>Wow, stop trying to play her accomplishments down. Most of us are in high school and still don't have anything published. Obviously her stuff is good enough to be published, and she is intelligent enough to lecture at 11. That's very impressive.</p>
<p>I wasn't particularly trying to push down her accomplishments. I think they're amazing, but I do also believe that a lot of students are held from their true potential. Somehow I think she has supportive parents, which many students, on here and around the world, lack.</p>
<p>I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to most of the people after you.</p>
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I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to most of the people after you.
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<p>Oh, ok. Darn, I'm kind of in the mood to argue. :)</p>
<p>errr i gotta say aside from the quantity of writing i don't see how she's very different from a lot of gifted kids</p>
<p>Aw, she's so cute. I can't help but find her adorable. If that's patronizing, sue me. :P</p>
<p>This is kind of sad, but I think she writes better than quite a few kids at my high school. Her prose is a lot better than her poetry, and I think if she did nonfiction it'd be better than her fiction. (Which I'd call derivative, but that sounds way harsh and... she's 11. Lol.) But yeah, I don't think she's specifically a LITERARY prodigy-- she just seems very intellectually gifted in general. Because it's the sophistication of her style more than the originality of her works that's impressive.</p>