Many child prodigies have lived sad lives, peaking early and ultimately failing to outdistance their plodding contemporaries. Often they have been performers whose extraordinary abilities were exploited by their families for profit or glory. Happily, the nine child wonders covered here by Toronto writer Charis Cotter not only bloomed precociously but seem to have gone on to lead rich and fulfilling lives.

Cotter’s selection is gender-balanced and multicultural, from the black slave poet Phillis Wheatley to 32-year-old Australian math whiz Terry Tao. She includes the 18th-century Italian mathematician Maria Agnesi, 19th-century musicians Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn, and the great 20th-century comedian Buster Keaton. The sole Canadian here is the Ottawa-born magician Dai Vernon. Some, like Stevie Wonder, should already be familiar. Others, like the delightful Chinese painter Wang Yani, now in her thirties, are tantalizingly unknown. Cotter’s sidebars on everything from the slave trade to Motown music are shrewdly placed to spark further research.

Despite the lively magazine format, with images and sidebars galore, this is unlikely to be a book to which many young readers will be independently drawn. Though Cotter’s enthusiasm for her subjects is clear, her attempts to bridge the gap between earlier eras and kids’ lives today feel strained at times. However, in a classroom, the book can offer rich opportunities for exploring the world through a special group of people. The most intriguing question of all is, surely: what makes a kid so smart so young?