New Zealands’s pride
By Hayden Donnel
The Torbay pair’s IQ test results rank in the top 0.4 per cent in the world.
At six, Lucy is the country’s youngest member of the high IQ society Mensa.
She can draw at a level about five years above her age, thanks to highly advanced visual spatial awareness.
Her 10-year-old sister Georgia, also a Mensa member, has written a 20,000 word, 25 chapter, novel called Long Live the Dolphins.
The book has garnered praise from authors including award-winning Kiwi writer Margaret Mahy.
In fact, her reading and writing is so voracious she has had to have treatment to deal with short sightedness.
Her advanced critical thinking and language comprehension allowed her to enter Murrays Bay Intermediate at nine.
At primary school she completed extension exercises including designing her own country, right down to its political setup, topography and taxation system.
“With Georgia it’s just reading, reading, reading. She reads hundreds of books every year. With Lucy it’s just drawing, drawing, drawing,” says their mother Amanda Halcrow.
“Both girls were reading at two. They’re the only girls I know who went to bed cuddling a book, not a teddy.”