Matilda

'I think it's a lot better than a lump of metal,' Matilda said. 'That's all a calculator is.'

'How right you are,' Miss Honey said. 'Pocket calculators are not allowed in this school anyway.' Miss Honey was feeling quite quivery. There was no doubt in her mind that she had met a truly extraordinary mathematical brain, and words like child-genius and prodigy went flitting through her head. She knew that these sorts of wonders do pop up in the world from time to time, but only once or twice in a hundred years. After all, Mozart was only five when he started composing for the piano and look what happened to him.

'It's not fair,' Lavender said. 'How can she do it and we can't?'

'Don't worry, Lavender, you'll soon catch up,' Miss Honey said, lying through her teeth.

At this point Miss Honey could not resist the temptation of exploring still further the mind of this astonishing child. She knew that she ought to be paying some attention to the rest of the class but she was altogether too excited to let the matter rest.

'Well,' she said, pretending to address the whole class, 'let us leave sums for the moment and see if any of you have begun to learn to spell. Hands up anyone who can spell cat.'

Three hands went up. They belonged to Lavender, a small boy called Nigel and to Matilda.

'Spell cat, Nigel.'

Nigel spelled it.

Miss Honey now decided to ask a question that normally she would not have dreamed of asking the class on its first day. 'I wonder,' she said, 'whether any of you three who know how to spell cat have learnt how to read a whole group of words when they are strung together in a sentence?'

'I have,' Nigel said.

'So have I,' Lavender said.

Miss Honey went to the blackboard and wrote with her white chalk the sentence, I have already begun to learn how to read long sentences. She had purposely made it difficult and she knew that there were precious few five-year-olds around who would be able to manage it.

'Can you tell me what that says, Nigel?' she asked.

'That's too hard,' Nigel said.

'Lavender?'

'The first word is I,' Lavender said.

'Can any of you read the whole sentence?' Miss Honey asked, waiting for the 'yes' that she felt certain was going to come from Matilda.

'Yes,' Matilda said.

'Go ahead,' Miss Honey said.

Matilda read the sentence without any hesitation at all.

'That really is very good indeed,' Miss Honey said, making the understatement of her life. 'How much can you read, Matilda?'

'I think I can read most things, Miss Honey,' Matilda said, 'although I'm afraid I can't always understand the meanings.'

Miss Honey got to her feet and walked smartly out of the room, but was back in thirty seconds carrying a thick book. She opened it at random and placed it on Matilda's desk. 'This is a book of humorous poetry,' she said. 'See if you can read that one aloud.'

Smoothly, without a pause and at a nice speed, Matilda began to read: 'An epicure dining at Crewe

Found a rather large mouse in his stew.

Cried the waiter, "Don't shout

And wave it about

Or the rest will be wanting one too." '

Several children saw the funny side of the rhyme and laughed. Miss Honey said, 'Do you know what an epicure is, Matilda?'