I attended the New York city final round of the Toddler Spelling Bee last weekend at Madison Square Garden and was astounded at the brilliance of these 2-4 year old contestants. Words like janissary, sesquipedalian,vicissitudinous, circumlocutory,jardiniere were child's play for these toddlers. The word "fish"stymied many of these preschoolers who added a "Y" to incorrectly spell it. "Doodyhead" was no problem, nor was "nanny nanny poo poo", but"cowabunga" proved to be too much for some spellers.
Problems and complaints by the contestants and their families arose when some participants failed to spell"vegetarianism" because they didn't eat their vegetables. Some of these tykes complained of nepotism. Little Laura said that something was rotten in Denmark. She accused the spelling bee board of directors of lascivious behavior .
The eventual winner and to no surprise to his family was little Johnny Johnson. J.J., as he prefers to be called is a graduate of the Evelyn Woodsky Reading Dynamics Course. He can read up to 2,000 words a minute. The word he won the championship on was "lycanthropic. J.J.attributes spelling "lycanthropic"to his turgid reading of the Russian midget kindergarten clasic..Little Red Riding in the Hood.
