Ellen Winner

This is a well-written book and one that is quite interesting in many ways. And yet it is a book I had trouble sticking with, not because of the writing, not because there were not interesting and valid points to be made, but primarily because the author’s reading of the subject was perhaps too narrow. There are books with which I may disagree with the author, strongly even perhaps, but in which I the reader cannot help but admire the intelligence of the author and the challenge posed in show more reading, books in which reading, and even disagreeing, becomes an enlightening experience. This was not such a book.

That does not mean this book was not very good, nor that the author does not adequately explore her subject and even enlighten the reader. Winner references all kinds of interesting studies, and yet, despite this, this particular reader felt disappointed, as if the book were headed in a good direction but stopped short of some elusive understanding. That said I am glad I read it and it is thought-provoking, original, even somewhat enriching. So perhaps it is on me that I wanted more... show less

This is an informative book about gifted students. It is an insightful book for teachers in order to help them understand the plight of families of these children. It makes us understand that just because these children have extremely high intelligence this does in fact cause the children and their families a lot of angst. A must read book for all educationalists and people working with the gifted.

Psychologist Ellen Winner studies the creative, non-literal discourse of children's spontaneous speech, examining how their abilities to use and interpret figurative language change as they grow older, and what such language shows us about the changing feature's of children's minds.