The Independent Stitch

Book: Secret Science Alliance by Eleanor Davis and friends

So the work continues, but I essentially need to refuel in mid-air. One of the ways I do that is by reading things that come at me out of the blue (often recommended by my daughter). They can't be long. They have to be interesting enough to break through my fatigue, and different enough to provide rest and new perspective.

Sometimes that includes manga, with which I am often disappointed. Frequently I can admire some of the artistic vision and quirky concepts, while I often don't feel like the entire package has been integrated or realized its potential.

The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook by Eleanor Davis (and co-conspirator Drew Weing plus some technical allies) is a graphic novel (not a manga, which is a subset of graphic novels) and it shows what can be accomplished when the text and images contribute equally to the storytelling in inventive ways.

The intended audience is middle-graders. The plot is nothing new or different. Who cares? It's fun. It's quick. It's well envisioned and witty. It works. I read the last page with a magnifying glass so I wouldn't miss much. I'm not sure I caught everything anyway.

Cover:

Inside:

Some spreads have significantly more dialog and text. I think the most enjoyable spreads are the most art-dependent ones.

Highly recommended for anyone who is not humor-impaired. That's probably most people I know.

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Back to the wool for me.

Roller dog

In the midst of all the other activities around here, we have been arranging for our older dog, Ariel, to have more independent mobility.

She was abandoned as a tiny puppy, so we know her age but not her ancestry. Her behavior and appearance have, throughout her life, suggested a strong Border collie component with spaniel-influenced ears and coat. She looks enough like a Border collie to be considered one by the American Kennel Club (with what's called an ILP listing) and allowed to compete in obedience trials, which she did until the onset of arthritis about nine years ago. She earned her CD, the Companion Dog title that is the first full level of obedience competition. She couldn't continue further with obedience or with agility because of the arthritis.

Anyway, she is still a dog who needs activity, even though she has become increasingly lame, despite all we have been able to do for her. At 15, she is one hundred percent engaged in life and with us. She chases her Buster Cube around the house. She may not hear as well as she used to (she doesn't always wake up immediately when we come home), but she can tell when someone might be about to drop a crumb on the floor, and will gnaw through anything (even multiple layers of cardboard) to get at a potential food source.

She does NOT like to be left home when anyone else is going for a walk or a ride in the car.

Her knees, however, can't keep up with her.

For a couple of years, we've been using a harness, which gives her a handle we can use to help her with steps, getting in and out of the car, and, more often lately, to keep her from some of the falling-over on the twice-daily walks she refuses to quit going on. The falling-over does not, amazingly, distress or frustrate her. She just waits until she can get herself up again, or until we give her a boost. We've also needed to use boots to protect her back feet because she can't lift them high enough to clear the pavement, although we take the boots off her when she gets to the grass at the park.

(When Ariel was young, only half of her muzzle was white. Her expressive eyebrows also were not highlighted, as they are now.)

Needing to come up with a new answer, we started learning about devices to help handicapped dogs. There are quite an amazing number of options, and fortunately we have several local resource people to help us figure out what to try for Ariel—Deanna Rogers, Jill Reynolds, and Connie Fredman.

So, after much research, soul-searching, and measuring, we located a refurbished set of wheels of the correct size for Ariel. They arrived from Montana a couple of weeks ago, and we have been sending photos back and forth to the manufacturer while we fine-tune the fitting. On Saturday, we actually used them for the first time.

Ari could sniff around on her own without one of us hovering to rescue her from the too-frequent cave-in of the back legs.

The wheels are set up in rehab mode, so she has to use all four limbs to move but she doesn't fall over. Our house is too small for her to have the wheels inside, but she can enjoy far more comfortable walks twice a day and we think she will be better able to maintain the strength in her legs because she's not wasting so much energy trying to stabilize the joints (or working to get back up).

On Sunday, Jill and her pup Skid, who is training to be a Search and Rescue dog, came by to see how the wheels worked. Ari showed us she was starting to get the hang of them.

(Daughter; Tussah—who is only about 12, as far as we know; Ari; Jill; and Skid, just over 1 year and doing fantastically with his S&R exercises and tests.)

By the end of the walk, Ari had figured out what wheels are good for.

Thanks to Doggon' Wheels for thoughtful design (these are 4WD wheels: rocks and hills no problem), great customer service, and making refurbished wheels available to dogs who just need a little lift.

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And, while we're on the topic of "may all beings be happy," here's a wonderful business in Africa called Shonaquip. . . .

Where most of the work gets done

I've written about the wonderful places to which I've traveled within the past year to work on the major project that is nearing its deadline (I'm not saying "completion": it will be pulled out of my hands, far from complete, because otherwise it will not be ready for a few decades).

I spent most of a week in a rented cabin shared with other writer friends.

Another set of friends helped me obtain the delight of a full week's residency.

And I retreated for a too-short weekend with co-author Carol Ekarius.

(That's me with Tuf, one of Carol's dogs. Carol took the picture.)

Yet I haven't shown where most of the work is getting done. That's partly because I'm embarrassed. It's organized, but it also looks like, as we used to say, "ten pounds in a five-pound bag."

I've worked in this office for many years—I think it's at least fourteen or fifteen:

For the final four or five years that I edited Spin-Off magazine, most of that work was accomplished in this space. Now this is where I do all the work on the books published by Nomad Press and for my freelance editorial clients. It's compact, but I have a window (the high, basement kind, just out of sight), and the tools I need are close at hand (an understatement). I do go off to a coffeeshop or the library several times a week, taking a single set of tasks with me. It's refreshing.

The photo above was taken during the time when the computers were breaking down, and just before Jessica Derksen, who has been an enormous help in my continuing efforts to accomplish the impossible, showed me how to fit yet another major job (The Project) into my office. It was April 2008. I'd signed the contract for this work four months earlier. Already 14 boxes of fiber were in the dining room (because there was no room for them in the office), and it was obvious that many more boxes would be part of this undertaking before it was done.

There was a storeroom adjacent to the office, separated from it by a wall. When we bought the house, this space was called a bedroom. We learned later that technically it shouldn't have been listed as a bedroom because there's no closet (there was also no closet in the formerly so-called bedroom that is now the office, although we have since built one).

The only access to this room was through the laundry area. This space has a nicer window than the office does. And a heat vent. The office doesn't have a heat vent.

Jessica got the idea of taking down the wall between the two rooms. The primary reason for this was so we could use the small hallway/entry between the laundry area and the storeroom to stash boxes of fiber. It was only about 10 square feet, but that can look like a lot if you are tripping over boxes. If we took down the wall, we could fill that entry space with boxes because we could walk into the storeroom through my office. The change was kindly, quickly, and neatly implemented by Jessica's husband, Jonathan.

I did lose a floor-to-ceiling wall of bookcases, shown here when I'd almost completely dismantled them:

I still haven't found permanent, orderly homes for everything that was displaced. However, these lines on the wall are the start of a big change.

And the wall came down:

Here's the view of the office from the former storeroom:

And the former storeroom as seen from the office:

Most of the work on The Project now takes place in that former storeroom, which, a year and a half later, looks like this:

You can't see all the active boxes in that picture. There are now 54 (if you don't count the ones that contain the extra bits that are not directly part of the book), so in addition to what's here there are more in the laundry room, in that entry/hallway this exercise freed up (which you can see a bit of between the bookcases in the photo above and, from the other side of the opening, below), and in the downstairs bathroom (as seen from the laundry area in the photo below):

I can't get a photo angle that shows the boxes on top of the dryer.

We're not done yet. There will be more boxes, and I'll need to figure out what to do with them. There's still space for about 3 on top of that pile in the bathroom.

It's been nice to pack 12 boxes (the number that will fit) into the car, along with the tools and the computer, and to go elsewhere. It's easier to focus when everything is neatly organized and I'm not having to juggle all the other responsibilities of these spaces and of the house, although I can only withdraw from the other dimensions of my life for a few days at a time.

Yet day in and day out, week, month, and year in and year out, most of the work gets done right here. The trips away have been real boosts to my progress: I'm amazed at what can get done with the support of those protected times and places. Yet plodding along in the middle of everything is also part of the whole package, and without it the job as a whole would be unreachable. 

I'm constantly grateful for Jessica's idea to tear down a wall, for my willingness to say yes, and for Jonathan's help in getting the restructuring job done so I could move forward.

dancepulse and PranaMamma: two brand new blogs

I just learned that my sister recently started a blog (and has been having computer problems), and then I got a note from a friend I've known for at least a dozen years (but have never met in person) who began her blog today.

They are both smart, wise women who know how to write. I can think of a number of people who read this blog who would very much enjoy their perspectives.

dancepulse: Dance education in particular, and arts education in general

Meg Mahoney, my sister, is a full-time dance educator in an inner-city public school. She didn't get to this place in life overnight. She knows a lot, and I'm so glad she's sharing her hard-earned knowledge: on how she moved from dancer to independent instructor to classroom teacher to full-time movement specialist, and on how she does what she does with the kids.

I know first-hand what a good teacher she is. When we lived in the same small town and were both in our 20s, she taught dance classes and I was one of her students. Those experiences have made a profound, ongoing difference in my life.

Here's a video prepared by KCTS-TV in Seattle when Meg won a Golden Apple Award, which recognizes extraordinary teachers. It's a little over 5 minutes long.

PranaMamma: Helping people keep breathing

Although PranaMamma—Respiratory Therapy: A Second Career in Mid-Life is presented anonymously, I know exactly who this is and how much life experience and richness she brings to her mid-life drastic career change. She's a fiber person who understands a number of elemental processes. She's taking on breath now. Everything she does is infused with spirit.

I'm looking forward to hearing more of her stories.

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Computer update

I plan to limp along for a while, because I don't have the heart (or time) to—again—format the hard drive and reinstall the operating system and all of the software and documents. I have tasks to complete and deadlines to meet. Everything's backed up, redundantly, so the amount of damage that can be done through software malfunction is limited.

Computer-geek friends have suggested ways to prevent future problems by creating drive partitions (which require rebooting when changing programs) or operating virtual machines. I'd have to set up networking to get files from one program to another, if the programs were operating on different partitions or virtual machines.

This does not sound like a comfortable, fluid working environment. In fact, it sounds less convenient than occasional blue-screen forced shutdowns.

I'll be looking into ways to dock the MacBook in the main office and hook it up to the printer and monitor without completely disabling the PC (which still runs several essential programs for which I have not found Mac equivalents).

The creative spirit: A couple of dancers

Knitter and dancer Ann McCauley forwarded me a link today to a YouTube video. I usually have to delete anything that's forwarded and I rarely have even a minute to go look at something on YouTube, but Ann's taste is impeccable (and not just in knitting). If Ann had a blog she could tell you about this herself, but she doesn't so I will!

What a testament to the creative spirit. This is an exquisite four-plus minutes of award-winning dance by an unusual duo: she has one arm, and he has one leg. There are no compromises in their performance; there's a whole lot of creativity, skill, and exceptional choreography (by Zhao Limin).

The introduction that Ann sent me from the message that she received is below; the page with the video contains additional links to interviews and television presentations by the dancers, Ma Li and Zhai Xiaowei. (Warning: The interviews and television are in Chinese; there's another site in French that has the video but it wasn't as clear on my computer as the YouTube version.)

This has me thinking about Eric Maisel's book about creative people and depression—the fact that people who need to create must create or their mental health can suffer: The Van Gogh Blues is finally coming out in paperback.

What a splendid example these dancers give of saying "Yes," no matter what.

_____

From the original writer who sent the video to Ann:

"When I was in China last month, I saw a Chinese modern dance competition on TV. One couple won one of the top prizes. The lady has one arm and the guy has one leg. They performed gracefully and beautifully.

"The lady in her 30s was a dancer and was trained as one since she was a little girl. Later she got into some kind of accident and lost her entire left arm. She was depressed for a few years. It seemed that someone asked her to coach a Children's dancing group. From that point on, she realized she could not forget dancing. She still loved to dance. She wanted to dance again. So she started to do some of her old routines. But by her losing an arm, she also lost her balance. It took a while before she could even making simple turns and spins without falling. Eventually she got it.

"Then she heard some guy in his 20s had lost a leg in an accident. This guy also fell into the usual denial, depression and anger type of emotional roller coaster. She looked him up (seemingly he was from a different Province) and persuaded him to dance with her. He had never danced. And to dance with one leg? Are you joking with me? No way. But she didn't give up. He reluctantly agreed. 'I have nothing else to do anyway.' She started to teach him dancing 101. The two broke up a few times because the guy had no concept of using muscles to control his body, and a few other basic things about dancing. When she became frustrated and lost patience with him, he would walk out. Eventually they came back together and started training. They hired a choreographer to design routines for them. She would fly high (held by him) with both arms (a sleeve for an arm) flying in the air. He could bend horizontally supported by one leg and she leaning on him, etc. They danced beautifully and they legitimately beat others in the competition."

Reading notes: Extraordinary Knowing

I just read an interesting book. This isn't a proper review; it consists of a few reading notes. The book's borrowed from a distant library and (1) I need to return it and (2) I need to get on to other things.

The little rebellious exceptions of spooky action at a distance. . . .

Those phrases from this book blend an observation by William James with one by Albert Einstein, and they make me smile both as individal ideas and in the combination I've composed above.

The book: Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind, by Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer (New York: Bantam, 2007). The paperback edition is due for release in February 2008.

The topic: unusual types of mental activity that may or may not exist (or exist as physically active forces), including clairvoyance, distant sensing, prayer, and the like.

I enjoyed reading it. Through it, the author, Elizabeth (Lisby) Mayer, has displayed an interesting mind. She was a psychologist who looked at inexplicable types of knowledge from a scientific perspective. Essentially, she talks about how we study ideas that are hard to study. She died of a chronic illness just after she had completed the manuscript; friends and colleagues pitched in and turned her notes on documentation into source notes.

The very good news is that she did complete the text. It's beautifully organized and clearly written. She listened to kids' observations and to experimental physicists' (and a lot of other people's) and gathered insights where she found them. She ranged comfortably between the simple and the complex. She asked more intelligent questions than she offered answers.

Here are a few snippets that I marked as I was reading, with a few contextual additions in brackets. The book itself is much more graceful to read than these excerpts may imply, although the thoughts they contain are some of the many that struck me as worth further contemplation.

• "Ambrose [Worrall; a faith healer in the mid-twentieth century] himself was a devout Christian, but when asked whether the people he healed needed to have faith, he replied, 'When I tell people faith matters, here's what I mean by faith—lack of resistance to what you hope is possible.' What's intriguing about his definition is how it locates faith as a subjective quality of mental experience. His answer is about humans, not God." [Source note: "People have reported varying versions of Worrall's definition of faith. My preference is for this one, though in The Gift of Healing he defines it as 'lack of resistance to that which you hope to receive' (196)."] (pages 169 and 284)
• "Models help us think. Without a conceptual home, observations that don't fit our existing models may be intriguing and entertaining, but they have the ultimate impact of writing on water. Without a model to contain them, we have no place to put new and unfamiliar things while we try to figure them out. . . . [W]e have real trouble thinking clearly, creatively, or for more than five minutes about things our models inform us are permanently homeless. . . . Part of the problem with creating a new model, I think, is that it has to account for data we're not used to considering data: feelings. . . . [Following an experience of anomalous cognition,] I had to doubt my existing models of reality or I had to doubt myself, the core sense of self that comes, [cognitive neuroscientist Antonio] Damasio tells us [in his book on consciousness, The Feeling of What Happens], when body, emotion, and idea merge to make consciousness." (page 214)
• "The vast preponderance of our mental life proceeds outside conscious awareness. We're perpetually and pervasively influenced by the prodigious force of unconscious mental processes. However, the distinction between conscious and unconscious is by no means absolute. . . . Over time, we've begun to mistake the content of the Freudian unconscious--repression of forbidden sexual impulses--for the insight itself. . . . By retaining that focus as the central truth of psychoanalysis, we've trivialized analysis as a clinical method but also as a theory of mind." (page 216)
• "Over the past two decades, experiments in cognitive neuroscience have repeatedly demonstrated that the overwhelming proportion of human mental activity occurs unconsciously. While those experiments don't let us directly observe mental activity that isn't conscious, they let us infer its presence and observe its fruits. . . . This has cause a humbling reappraisal of consciousness." (pages 216-217)
• "Soon Bob [Jahn] was giving me lessons in elementary post-Newtonian, post-Einsteinian physics. In return, I began telling him about current research on unconscious mental processes. . . . I'll never be a quantum physicist. Bob will never be a psychoanalyst. We're each deeply steeped in our own spheres of thinking, so deeply that we're barely aware of how they color everything we see. We're like fish unable to recognize water. But that means we each bring something unique and different to the other, something that geneticist Barbara McClintock called a 'feeling for the organism.' That kind of feeling, said McClintock, was what enabled her to win a Nobel Prize for her stunningly unexpected insights into the genetics of corn. As she explained to the flocks of reporters who asked how she'd done it, she knew corn so well that she could predict how each of her individual plants would differentially respond to a slight change in nighttime temperature. She had a profound feeling for her organism. . . . I'll never have that kind of feeling for what happens in quantum physics. Nor will Bob Jahn for psychoanalysis. But because we do each have a feeling for our own particular organism, we also have a feeling for what is as opposed to what it isn't. And that matters. New insight comes from knowing what something isn't at least as much as knowing what it is."  (pages 245, 252)
• Then there's the mention of physical phenomena that "Einstein once dubbed spukhafte Fernwirkungen, "spooky action at a distance," now described as entanglement, which "may end up playing a large role in how quantum physicists reconcile the roles of relativity and quantum theory in their search for a 'grand unified theory of everything.'" (page 257)
• (about successful work with in psychoanalysis): "You're perpetually reminded that trying hard doesn't get you there, and that you both [therapist and client] get there best when you somehow manage a state of trying and not trying, knowing and not knowing, certainty and uncertainty all at once. Every time you think you've hit on a less paradoxical formula, you're humbled again." (page 259)
• "Nearly one hundred years ago, William James published an essay called 'The Confidences of a "Psychical Researcher."' . . . It . . . raises many questions that still lack definitive answers. . . . [including this one:] 'But when was not the science of the future stirred to its conquering activities by the little rebellious exceptions to the science of the present?'" (oops, I've turned the book back in and forgot to grab the page number, but it's between its above-and-below neighbors here)
  
• "As I returned again and again to my notes on connectedness, one of Freud's most famous pronouncements took on a new resonance for me. In Civilization and Its Discontents, he described a correspondence between himself and Romain Rolland, the French novelist and pacifist who'd won the Nobel Prize for literature. Rolland had taken issue with Freud's attribution of all mystical and religious feeling to infantile illusion. Rolland held no brief for institutionalized religion or even for religious faith, but he believed that there existed a subjective human state that Freud's analysis of religion dismissed too quickly. Freud's respect for Rolland was great, but he simply could not recognize the experience Rolland described as basic to human existence. . . . It's fascinating. Freud was ready to permit the boundaryless quality of love, but he extended it only to sexual love. Only in that state, he said, do we see a nonpathological version of unboundaried human experience. That might have been one of Freud's most decisive articulations. It was certainly decisive for the future development of psychoanalytic theory. It led, among other things, to the irrevocable divergence of Jungian and Freudian thought." (pages 267-268)

Finished book: High IQ Kids!

A UPS truck pulled up at the curb in front of the house early this morning and delivered an author's (in this case, editor's) copy of High IQ Kids! This is an "advance" copy, although not an "advance reader's copy" or ARC, because it's the real book, freshly unpacked from the printer's shipment before the official publication date (which is, I think, September 1 although the publisher lists a ship date of August 31, or tomorrow). The books were about four days late from the printer, which seems to be a recurring theme right now. . . . Maybe all the printers are currently overloaded with fall titles. . . .

The volume's 416 pages contain 30 essays and technical papers on raising and educating high-IQ kids.

What's a "high IQ kid"?

Good question. If you want to get precise, which I don't and some of the people involved with this book may disagree with the following statement, it's a kid who tests above 145 on a standard instrument. HOWEVER:

IQ testing is imprecise (several articles in the book go into this in detail). Different sources set up different categories. There's a technical testing definition of IQ scores and giftedness (it's on pages 7 and, with slight variations, 60).

But pigeonholes are only useful in a few contexts, like research. The current arbitrary levels being used by the researchers we included in the book are mildly gifted, moderately gifted, highly gifted, exceptionally gifted, and profoundly gifted. These categories align with standard deviations above the norm.

A rule-of-thumb that I came across years ago that has been helpful to me in a practical sense suggested that kids in the mildly and moderately gifted ranges can do anything they want in life (i.e., they're smart enough to do whatever they choose) and can still cope well with the prevailing environments (e.g., school, home, and regular social interactions). Those at the other above-average levels (highly, exceptionally, and profoundly gifted) are "wired" differently in enough ways that they will not be able to cope comfortably with the prevailing environments. They don't think "better," they think differently, which means they just don't operate on the same wavelength. They don't care about the same topics of conversation and they may come up with questions and ideas that don't make sense to other people.

That's neither better nor worse. People with those levels of intelligence, though, are the ones for whom High IQ Kids offers guidance . . . along with anyone else who fits a similar enough profile that the information might help.

I have a personal theory that everyone comes into life with a package of strengths and weaknesses that's about equivalent to everyone else's. Intelligence, as we measure it in the industrialized Western world of the twenty-first century, is just one component of everyone's package. Because each of us has a unique combination of attributes, the trick is in figuring out how best to use the pluses without being tripped up by the minuses. Or, for parents and other responsible adults, in raising children to enjoy and develop their strengths and to compensate for, instead of being limited by, their weaknesses.

The information in the book will help anyone who is trying to parent, teach, counsel, or befriend a kid who sometimes seems "too smart," whether the child also has learning differences or not (many high-IQ kids do).

It will also help adults who are guiding children who don't seem "too smart"—who appear to be quite average or are putting out so little effort they seem below average—but are having unexplained and serious difficulties in standard classrooms (or in "standard" gifted-and-talented programs, if they've shown some of their potential).

I'm really pleased that Free Spirit Publishing is the press releasing this book. Not only is it independent, it's the publisher of several books that helped me out through all those years. They've got even more great stuff now.

High IQ Kids contains all the best information that I needed in one place while I was working on getting one of these kids raised to adulthood alive and with only average requirements for additional psychotherapy.

Giftedness is generally not an "okay" topic of conversation in our society. Several of the contributors to this book have asked to be identified by pseudonyms. It has not been easy for my daughter and me to go public on this topic, either. However, we agreed long ago that we'd do anything we could do to keep even one other kid or parent from going through what we had to handle. An overview of our school saga, titled "Red Zone," is on pages 246 to 259.

The same impetus that motivates my daughter and me—to help others—brought together the three editors of this book to do the looooooong, complicated work of gathering the pieces, editing them, eliminating some (the book could have been twice as long; trimming was the hardest part), and finding the right publisher.

Between us, we've parented four of these kids, and over the decades we've been in touch with many other parents and children in similar situations. They're everywhere: in all geographic, social, economic, racial, and other environments. And all of them are similarly challenged to just facilitate an appropriately happy (and appropriately unhappy) childhood and an effective education.

The book's full title is High IQ Kids: Collected Insights, Information, and Personal Stories from the Experts. Some of the essays in it were written by young adults about their experiences when they were younger. They're probably the truest experts.

The sections include:

1. What's in a Number?
2. Take a Number
3. More Than a Number

And
    Resources and more information.

Here's a full list of the contents:

Part 1: What's in a Number?

• 1 Defining the Few: What Educators and Parents Need to Know about Exceptionally and Profoundly Gifted Children, by Annette Revel Sheely and Linda Kreger Silverman
• 2 Normal Kids Don't Quack, by Cathy Marciniak (we editors wanted to lead with this essay, but the publisher preferred to define terms before launching right into the puzzled parents' world)
• 3 Young Gifted Children as Natural Philosophers, by Deirdre Lovecky
• 4 Calculus, Pooh, and Tigger Too, by Courtney James
• 5 Intellectual Assessment of Exceptionally and Profoundly Gifted Children, by John D. Wasserman
• 6 Recommendations for Identifying and Serving Black Youth in Gifted Programs, by Tarek C. Grantham and Linda A. Long
• 7 Twice Exceptionality: Life in the Asynchronous Lane, by Lee Singer
• 8 An Anomaly: Parenting a Twice-Exceptional Girl, by Kiesa Kay

Part 2: Take a Number

• 9 "So You're the Teacher of a Profoundly Gifted Child" (And Then There Was Bill), by Laura Freese
• 10 What Makes the Highly Gifted Child Qualitatively Different? Implications for Schooling, by Karen B. Rogers
• 11 Too Smart for School? A Lesson about Teaching and Learning, by Marilyn Walker
• 12 Becoming an Educational Advocate: Dolphin's Story, by Carolyn Kottmeyer
• 13 The Underachievement of Gifted Students: Multiple Frustrations and Few Solutions, by Sally M. Reis
• 14 Surviving in Spite of It All, by Shaun Hately
• 15 Curriculum Issues for the Profoundly Gifted, by Joyce VanTassel Baska
• 16 Of Importance, Meaning, and Success: Application for Highly and Profoundly Gifted Students, by Christine S. (Tee) Neville
• 17 Homeschooling with Profoundly Gifted Children, by Kathryn Finn
• 18 Unfettered Innovation: The Promise of Charter Schools, by Amanda P. Avallone
• 19 An Early Entrance Program: A Well-Rounded College Experience for Young Students, by Trindel Maine (more) and Richard S. Maddox
• 20 A Longitudinal Study of Radical Acceleration with Exceptionally and Profoundly Gifted Children, by Miraca U. M. Gross

Part 3: More Than a Number

• 21 Red Zone, by Deborah Robson
• 22 The Problem of Pain, by Stephanie S. Tolan
• 23 When the Pop Bottle Overflows, by Judy Fort Brenneman
• 24 Giftedness is Heart and Soul, by Annemarie Roeper
• 25 A Mixed Blessing, by Ilona von Karolyi-Ross
• 26 Out of the Ordinary, by Elizabeth Lovance (also here)
  
• 27 Birds and Bees: Sex and the High-IQ Adolescent, by Annette Revel Sheely
• 28 Abnormally Brilliant, Brilliantly Normal, by Elizabeth Meckstroth
• 29 Rainbow Spirits, by Annamarie Summers

Appendix: Resources and More Information

• 30 Strength in Numbers: An Introduction to the Resources, by Judy Fort Brenneman

Here's the back cover.

The first reaction of all three editors at seeing the cover photos was that we wished our children had been able to experience that kind of joy-in-learning and comfortable confidence.

Our deepest hope is that because of this book more children in the future will look more often like the kids in the pictures.