Excerpt from Rewrite of Book #1: Ms. Loveless

Ms. Loveless, school administrator, explains to Jenny, six-year-old Stefan's nanny how they have made Jenny's job easier:

Ms. Loveless points through the glass. “We have made great progress with Stefan. When we started with Stefan, he would squeal and thump books that frustrated him. Eventually he would yell, “Die!” and throw the book into the corner trashcan across the room. If a book was too basic for him, he would do the same thing. Now, we make him write a paper explaining why the book is bad and quietly place the book in the center stack. The left stack are books he has completed successfully. We never let that stack get too big. When Stefan’s imagination starts to run away, I slip a few rejected high school math texts into his reading stack on the right. It’s a cheap way to get him to write since there are lots of them laying around. He is a much more compliant child now.”

Jenny shakes with repressed anger. She realizes that she cannot intervene since she is just the nanny. To do otherwise might blow her cover.

“So you see, Jenny, we have made your job a bit easier by civilizing Stefan. We see this kind of child quite a lot from parents that indulge their children too much, though never before to the degree that Stefan exemplifies. His mother has told me that his father indulges him with science books that are too hard for a child his age in an effort to make Stefan believe he is a genius.”

“Isn’t he?”


“I see he has fooled you too. No, he actually requires an inordinate amount of help compared to what a child is entitled to. We were able to make him compliant when we pointed out how the other children were suffering because he was taking too much of the teacher’s time. Thank goodness he is an overly empathetic child.”