Smarts: The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis

Both strong and struggling, the brilliant heroine of a novel (and a wildly popular Netflix series) stayed true to her talent and her introvert personality.

Intellectually gifted children often have a socially hard time in school, unless they have something else going for them, like a knack for sports or a personality that makes them popular. Introverted kids whose smarts put them years ahead of their peers tend to get sidelined when it comes to being included in parties, sleepovers and cliques. This in turn makes them more isolated and vulnerable to bullying – even by teachers.

In the 1983 novel by Walter Tevis, The Queen’s Gambit, super-bright Beth Harmon has an additional strike against her: She is an eight-year-old orphan. At the Methuen Home, she lines up for tranquillizer pills twice a day with all the other kids. But nothing in this Kentucky institution really captures her attention until one day, sent to the basement to clomp chalk out of blackboard erasers, she sees the school’s janitor studying a checkerboard set with pieces more elaborate than checkers.