I had read this book before and didn't care for it. I didn't like the way it dealt with a genius girl. I had previously read Frindle by the same author and disliked it, too, so I just put that author in my "don't like" category and dismissed it. But then, I read another of his books, The Landry News, almost by accident. I was subbing and the kids had a silent reading time. I like to model reading at the same time, so I picked out a title from the teacher's book selection and that was it. It was OK. Better than Frindle and The Report Card. But then, one of my newsgroups, GT-Families, I think, was discussing this book and I decided to look again.
The story is about a girl who is a genius. She became aware of her unusual abilities at a very early age, seemingly at birth or even before. When very young, she was able to almost instantly put together complicated puzzles that were difficult for her much older sister. She decided then that she needed to hide her abilities, because they made her sister mad and caused her parents to demand performances from her. When she goes off to school, she decides again that she will not show her abilities, choosing instead to model herself after each of the other students in the classroom in turn. She finally settles on modeling what her friend Steven does. He is an average student - a good kid, who works hard to accomplish what he does and she decides to emulate him.
She does not completely neglect her own interests and abilities - she just pursues them where no one else can detect what she is up to. She tries very hard to be just average - until the school starts giving standardized tests that indicate how well or poorly a student is doing in relation to the rest of the class/world. She decides that the tests and grades in general are too demoralizing to many kids and she sets out to defy their importance, which she does by purposely getting all D's on her report card. She makes one mistake, though, she gets a C in spelling. Her biggest mistake, though, is that she wasn't consistently getting D's, but rather purposely let her grades drop just after the cut off when parents would be notified that their daughter wasn't doing well.
The parents get upset and confront the teachers, the teachers justify themselves. Everyone decides that she needs to be tested to determine what, exactly, her abilities are. Only, they give her a test with which she is unfamiliar and hasn't had a chance to research - the WISC III. She decides that she will pass the test at about an average level, figuring that 7 out of 10 in about average. Interestingly, this turns out to be the continuation criterion of many intelligence tests - you keep on going to the next highest level, as long as you get approximately 7 out of 10 answers correct. I am not familiar enough with the WISC III to know if this is the continuation criterion for it, but I have given other IQ tests with that criterion. At any rate, she keeps on going until the test is done.
As was discussed in the news group, the actual scoring of her test was probably written about incorrectly in the book. She would not have been given a mental age score, I don't believe, as the scoring for this test is not designed to do that. Nevertheless, it is clear that she is extremely intelligent. If she had been average, she would not have been able to continue to answer 7 out of 10 correct consistently as the test got harder and harder, which it IS designed to do. So she was "discovered". And then the adults decided that they needed to do something about it - put her in a special school, have her attend the gifted program in her school.
In the end, she convinces Stephen to join her in a protest and many of the kids purposely get 0's on the next test. When she realizes what this means - disrespect for learning, etc., she convinces the kids to stop the protest and get back to work. She refuses the special school and the gifted program and goes back to educating herself on the sly while the others do the regular work.
There are many problems with this book, in addition to the scoring of the exam discussed above. Firstly, I am not sure if I believe the infancy stories. Not so much the puzzle story - it seems unlikely, but it is hard for me to completely discount it, because I am obviously not as smart as Nora. But what seems even more unlikely is the early decision to hide her abilities and her complete ability to fool her parents into thinking that she was average or even slightly below. I just don't see how an infant could hide her interests and abilities from parents who are involved with and interested in their children. It is true that she is a third child, but so am I - and my parents weren't completely clueless about me. Her reasoning just doesn't ring true to me.
One thing that does seem completely plausible is her decision to act like the other children in her class. I have heard that story many times from parents of gifted children.
But there are other things that bother me: why does she so completely buy into the idea that she has to hide her abilities. Yes, our society doesn't particularly like people of exceptionally high ability, and it is probably entirely too correct that denying her ability is much easier on everyone than using it. But the author seems to condone the idea when, in the end, he shows her going back to the regular classroom - with nothing exceptional being done to acknowledge or deal with her abilities. The message seems to be "act normal - that is the best way for everyone". It isn't good to be obviously too different.
All in all, this is a very problematic book, especially for young and brilliant girls.
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