McLEAN, Va. — In the past few weeks, 6-year-old Lori Anne Madison has won major awards in swimming and math, but one accomplishment has made her an overnight national celebrity: Lori Anne is the youngest person ever to qualify for the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
This week, the precocious girl from Lake Ridge, Va., will be onstage with youngsters more than twice her age and twice her size as one of 278 spellers who have qualified for the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
“She’s like a teenager in a 6-year-old body,” said Sorina Madison, her mother. “Her brain, she understands things way ahead of her age.”
On a recent sunny day, Lori Anne and her friends splashed in the waters at the Scotts Run Nature Preserve in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.
“Oh my gosh, what is it? A water worm. A water worm! It’s alive,” said Lori Anne, her shoes soaked. “I need it in my collection. It’s wonderful.”
Lori Anne hit all her childhood milestones early, walking and talking well before others in her play group. She was reading before she was 2. She swims four times a week, keeping pace with 10-yearold boys.
“Once she started reading, that’s when people started looking strange at us, in libraries, everywhere. She was actually fluently reading at 2, and at 2 1/2, she was reading chapter books,” Sorina said.
When Sorina tried to enroll her in a private school for the gifted, the headmaster told her that Lori Anne was too smart to accommodate and should school at home.
That meant an unexpected lifestyle change for Lori Anne’s mother, a college professor who teaches health-related courses. Lori Anne now studies at home and wants to be an astrobiologist - a combination of her two favorite subjects, astronomy and biology.
Now there’s another lifestyle wrinkle: spelling bee fame. When Lori Anne spelled “vaquero” to win the regional bee in Prince William County in March, she set a new standard for youth in the national bee’s 87-year history. The bee doesn’t have a minimum age, but no one younger than 8 had ever previously qualified for the nationals.
“It was shocking,” Sorina said. “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.”
Interviews can be boring for a 6-year-old, especially if it’s a television interview where she has to sit and sit and sit, so Lori Anne told her mother: “I want to go back to being a kid.”
So she and her parents reached a compromise, and Lori Anne was more than happy to let an Associated Press reporter and photographer tag along at a picnic with other gifted home schooled children, but she craftily steered any questions about spelling back toward the joint pursuit of snails, slugs, tadpoles, water striders and baby snakes.
On why she wants to be an astrobiologist, she said: “I’m going to sort of find life forms. And plus, alien planets are new. But I need some slugs.”
Asked to spell her favorite word, she raced through “sprachgefuhl.” Asked to spell it backward, she paused, took her time and spelled it correctly.
“It’s even crazier backwards than it is forwards,” she said and giggled. “Now let’s look for some slugs or snails.”
On all the attention: “I asked for no interviews, but the media seems to be disobeying me,” she said, “and that’s why we’re looking for snails and water slugs right now.”
Front Section, Pages 8 on 05/29/2012