The book that ChloeC is perusing in the photo visible above, The Unusual Mind of Vincent Shadow (book site), is one that we’ve just finished reading in our P4 classes.
The eponymous main character is a highly-motivated and independent-minded young boy who also happens to be a toy inventor working out of a secret laboratory in the attic of his family’s home. That is, until his father uproots their blended family and moves them halfway across the United States — forcing Vincent to abandon his lab and his toy prototypes and also, it seems, his dreams. Vincent’s inventing days appear to be over until the opportunity of a lifetime presents itself. Read the book if you’d like to find out what happens next.
One of the most endearing lines in the book comes a little more than midway through the story when Vincent is seeking his parents’ approval to go back to New York for a competition and, instead of supporting and encouraging him, they splash cold water on his hopes and tell him that such a trip just isn’t in the cards at the moment and console him with vague promises that he can always enter other contests and take other trips to New York. Instead of meekly swallowing their objections, he tells them, “I have worked too hard for too many years to get this close to my dream and just let it go.”
Right on, Vincent!
As fictional role models go, one could do much worse than Vincent Shadow