6-Year-Old Becomes Youngest To Qualify For Scripps National Spelling Bee

Six-year-old Lori Anne Madison from Virginia has become the youngest person ever to qualify for the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and will compete against 277 others, most of whom are twice her age.

Sorina Madison stated of her daughter, according to Yahoo News, that:

“She’s like a teenager in a 6-year-old body. Her brain, she understands things way ahead of her age.”

She went on to say of her daughter’s reading skills that:

“Once she started reading, that’s when people started looking strange at us, in libraries, everywhere, she’s actually fluently reading at 2, and at 2 ½ she was reading chapter books.”

Sorina Madison explained that, with Lori Anne’s amazing talent in all of her school subjects, she was too smart to be placed in a private school for the gifted. Anne must now study at home, according to The Virginia Pilot, and is able to master topics other kids her age won’t be able to understand for years. She even aspires to be an astrobiologist, and also an Olympian, as she is already keeping up with 10 year old boys.

The Boston Globe reports that Sorina was surprised by all the attention her daughter has been receiving, stating that:

“It was shocking. I didn’t expect all the media attention. We’re private people. We’re regular people. It was intimidating. But I’m happy for her. She loves it and she does it because it’s a passion, and we never push her into anything and want her to make her own choices.”

Little Lori Anne has her own opinion about interview and the attention she is receiving. She stated of the attention that:

“I sort of didn’t like it. I asked for no interviews but the media seems to be disobeying me, and that’s why we’re looking for snails and water slugs right now. I want to go back to being a kid and playing with my friends.”

The Scripps National Spelling Bee will begin on Friday.

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