The personal growth of child prodigies has traditionally captured a decent share of attention in popular culture. Child prodigies have appeared in various works of literature. There have also been many films and TV series about child prodigies, mainly family dramas centering on how children with advanced minds cope with a world which sees them either as unique or abnormal, and many of which have attracted media and scholarly attention. W. Ferguson has identified differences in the factual versus fictional accounts of child prodigies. This article indicates some of the more notable examples of child prodigies in fiction.
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, fictional, child and/or prodigies:
“A man’s interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Every morning I woke in dread, waiting for the day nurse to go on her rounds and announce from the list of names in her hand whether or not I was for shock treatment, the new and fashionable means of quieting people and of making them realize that orders are to be obeyed and floors are to be polished without anyone protesting and faces are to be made to be fixed into smiles and weeping is a crime.”
—Janet Frame (b. 1924)
“One of the proud joys of the man of letters—if that man of letters is an artist—is to feel within himself the power to immortalize at will anything he chooses to immortalize. Insignificant though he may be, he is conscious of possessing a creative divinity. God creates lives; the man of imagination creates fictional lives which may make a profound and as it were more living impression on the world’s memory.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)
“Raising children is a spur-of-the-moment, seat-of-the-pants sort of deal, as any parent knows, particularly after an adult child says that his most searing memory consists of an offhand comment in the car on the way to second grade that the parent cannot even dimly recall.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
““... The grave and my calm body are shut to your coming as stone,
And the endless beginning of prodigies suffers open.””
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)