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Ono occasionally comes off as odd to some of his seventh-grade classmates. "He talks to himself a lot," says one. "He's a little strange," says another. Indeed, his teachers also say he is exceptionally sensitive. Many of his pieces are inspired by New York City (he wants to be an architect when he grows up), so 9/11 was a huge shock. "Junichi really took it to heart," says one teacher. When Ono recently visited New York City to open an exhibition of his work, he took time out to see ground zero. "He got back in the car without saying a word," says his mother. "He still hasn't talked to us about it."
Notoriety, too, adds to the pressure of being a beautiful freak. Step into the diminutive shoes of Japanese table-tennis star Ai Fukuhara. She started playing Ping-Pong at the age of three when she could barely see over the table. Two years later she was winning competitions, often trouncing opponents three years her senior. Her powerful volleys and tendency to burst into tears when she lost made her a favorite among Japanese fans, who nicknamed her "Ai-chan," chan being a suffix reserved for children. On top of homework, she must endure a punishing training schedule and unrelenting attention from the media. When traveling by train to tournaments, "women would come up and pinch her cheeks," says Chiyo Fukuhara, her mother.
Now 14 and in training for the Athens Olympics, Japan's table-tennis ace wants her life back. Her name isn't Ai-chan, she insists—it's Ai Fukuhara. Previously her manager answered for her at press conferences; these days, she speaks for herself. And the trademark waterworks? Fukuhara still cries, she confesses, but her tears are not for public consumption. "I used to cry when I lost. Now I let it all out once a month. The stress and exhaustion build up and everything I've been keeping inside just explodes. Sometimes I cry even when there is nothing particular to cry about." And although constantly orbited by various trainers and managers, Fukuhara remains convinced of one fact: her talent is entirely her own. "If I ever decided to quit," she says, "then nothing my parents would say would change my mind. It's my life, not my parents'."
Prodigies should not put away childish things simply because they perform as adults, say experts. "Children still need time to be children," says McCann of Flinders University. Violinist Yeou-Cheng Ma—the lesser-known older sister of cellist Yo-Yo—once poignantly remarked of her eight-hours-a-day practice sessions, "I traded my childhood for my good left hand." Even the devoted Singaporean pianist Sin sometimes wants a break from her beloved instrument. "Most of the time I enjoy practicing," she says, "but sometimes I only want to play with Jacky." Jacky is her 18-month-old Yorkshire terrier.
Usually lost in the media celebration surrounding child prodigies is a sobering truth: most do not mature into adult leaders in their fields. (Parents of underachievers can console themselves with the fact that many adult pioneers—like late-bloomer Charles Darwin were not child prodigies.) Some burn out spectacularly, others carry on in their specialties in adulthood but never match their remarkable childhood achievements. Still others just become bored with pursuits they once found all-consuming and move on.
It is no coincidence that prodigies tend to master adult fields that are formal and rigorously rule-bound, such as music, chess or math. You don't hear of kids winning Booker Prizes or devising U.S. national security strategies. To make the leap from pint-size prodigy to grownup genius—that is, into a person who not only excels in a subject but revolutionizes it—requires more than mere technical prowess. It takes intuition, creativity, originality and years of patience and diligence. "If precocity and technical skill are all that prodigies have," observes Winner, the psychologist, "as adults they are no longer special. Late bloomers have caught up with them."
While they are young, though, they seem uncatchable. Each day, Tathagat Avatar Tulsi, 15, pedals his red bicycle through the hallowed grounds of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India's premier science school, where he is on his way to becoming the nation's youngest Ph.D. Hailing from Patna in Bihar—one of India's most underdeveloped states—Tulsi earned his undergraduate degree in physics at age 10. He has been famous since he was six years old, when the local newspapers nicknamed him "computer brain" for his ability to take a random date and immediately calculate which day of the week it fell on. Years later, amid great public controversy, Tulsi and his father claimed that he had discovered a new particle to explain the presence of dark matter in the universe—a claim the young physicist never substantiated, which briefly brought the media tag "fraudigy" upon him. (Tulsi says he had merely suggested an idea that, if proved mathematically, might explain dark matter, but the Indian press misrepresented his theory. He later filed a defamation suit against a wire service and a government official who was critical of him in the press.)
Hype and hyperbole aside, Tulsi is the real thing. If he completes his doctorate within three years as planned, he will have gained a place in the record books. Still, he wants more. His next aim: to get a paper published in such globally renowned journals as Nature or Physical Review—and shake the label of "beautiful freak" once and for all. "I want to show I am an original thinker," says Tulsi, "not just a kid who passes his exams ahead of time." For most kids, trying to pass exams is hard enough; for prodigies, that's the easy part.