Thursday, April 17, 2008

Portrait of the artist as a birthday girl

So she's nine. N-I-N-E. And as precocious as ever. The night after her birthday she was reading her Cricket magazine and discovered that they had a poetry contest. Twenty minutes later she came downstairs and presented me with the following, which is even more striking when you see it in her little girl handwriting. I'm punctuating just as she did (except the italics):

The opposite of armadillo.
Why couldn't it be worm?
The opposite of still.
One answer could be squirm.
The opposite of acknowledge.
It could be learn.
The opposite of give away.
Why, that could be earn.
What's the opposite of opposite?
It could be synonym.
What's the opposite of walk?
If you wanted, swim.
Most things have opposites.
Why don't you look around?
Opposites are antonyms
Dark and bright, silence and sound.

I mean, really. How am I supposed to raise a child who can write better than I can at the age of nine? I love the illustrations she did the next day, too...

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