Spark by Kristine Barnett ✔✔✔

I heard Barnett being interviewed on CBC Radio, and I was impressed with her son's story.  I'm also pretty sure I'd heard about him before. Jake was born with autism, but also with incredible mathematical skills.  He was placed in a Special Ed programme, but his mother withdrew him because he was so unhappy - teachers were trying to discover what he couldn't do rather than what he could. And what he can do is virtually immeasureable, although he has to be reminded to tie his shoelaces, and eat a proper breakfast.

This child's mind is unbelievable!  Kristine relates driving past a Best Buy parking lot at 55 mph, and Jake being able to tell her not only how many cars were in the lot, but also what percentage of them were silver in color! At age seven, she makes arrangements for him to audit college classes, where the professors often cannot answer his questions.  At age 11, he becomes a full-time student in a graduate degree programme, although only one class at a time, simply because when he and his Mom went for the interview, the coins in his pocket overflowed onto the floor, and he was more interested in retrieiving them than talking to the admitting officer! At the present time, he is tutoring his classmates, and research is being done into his developing what has been termed an "original theory" of mathematics, which could put him in line for a Nobel Prize.

I would assign more stars to this book for Jake and Kristine's story, but I wasn't too impressed with the writing. But a fascinating read all the same.  People like Jake do not forget information - they are constantly reliving the moment when they learned, and their ability is akin to our never forgetting how to ride a bike.  When we have to remember a telephone number, we have to write it down quickly, or it'll be forgotten, but Jake's mind is itself the page that's written upon - and his mom describes the size of his "page" as the size of a football field.

It still is almost impossible to comprehend, but the book again reveals the remarkable power and ability of the human brain.  If I were a student again, I'd want to pursue this a bit further.