Isaac Newton, Marie Curie, the bald boy from Prison Break; every generation has their super genius. And the iPad babies, AKA the mini-millennials, AKA the children who threaten to “gallstone-maxx” me at my volunteer math tutor job, are no exception. Oh, for those curious, “gallstone-maxxing” is when you give somebody gallstones by grinding up cholesterol pills into powder, then sprinkling it in increasing quantities of said cholesterol into their vitamin water while they’re not looking. It’s as unsettling as it is impossible, and it is wildly unpleasant. Anyway… Caleb Green, Upper Grader at James Tiberius Hussein Elementary, is leaving teachers and classmates dumbfounded with his scholarship. Despite being in just fifth grade, the boy is already reading at a fifth-grade level!
“We’re talking Hatchet. We’re talking The Wild Robot. We’re talking Tuck Everlasting — out loud with minimal stuttering,” says teacher Mrs. Burzynski, Caleb’s teacher. “He can even spell ‘effort’ correctly (minus the second f) without looking it up!”
But his skills don’t cap at fluency; he’s downright virtuosic in comprehension too. While his peers are playing Geometry Dash and asking ChatGPT how to cyberbully Prince George, Green can compare the themes of Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Roderick Rules “efortlessly.” Other educators thought it was hubris when he referred to himself as “the White Young Sheldon,” but he’s proven them wrong!
In the middle of an active literacy crisis, it’s refreshing to see the torch of literary adequacy being passed down. As Green himself puts it, “reading is my light at the end of the tunnel…it shows me that, even in darkness, there is a tunnel.” He then asked the reporter to list synonyms for tunnels and laughed so hard at the word “shaft” that he had to be taken to the hospital. We wish him a speedy recovery!
