CHILD GENIUS OF SIX

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 436, 18 May 1937, Page 3

CHILD GENIUS OF SIX

ENGLISH GIRL Learns Year’s Lessons In Month London, May 3. Six-year-old Gillian Cooper, of Southampton, is the wonder of psychologists and doctors from all over Britain. She could read a newspaper at four, wroote poetry at five, and now dips into the Encyclopaedia Brittannica for recreation. She is far ahead of every pupil in the school she attends —-though she is one of the youngest. Her work is set as an example to girls of fifteen. In one month she masters a whole year's? school work. Gillian is descended from a long line of brilliapt men and women—-her, mother is an expert linguist—psychologis'ts believe that the talent of generations has accumulated in this little fair-haired child. Her fame brought interviewers down from London this week; Gillian received them like a grown-up. “So you have come from that extraordinary town London,” she said. “I am most interested, in people from London, I-don’t mean that you're extraordinary. People are all quite normal when you get to know them. It’s living in London that makes such a difference.”

Doctors gay that Gillian is not only a prodigy but a genius. The danger if that her brain will grow too fast and she will not be able to find a place in the normal world'. “She is highly imaginative,” Mrs. Cooper said. "Doctors forbid her to read imaginative stories.”