Wunderkind Gifted 9-year-old is a published poet
but still gets a kick out of kid things

Rona Marech, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 6, 2001

When Sahara Sunday Spain turned 1, her mother
invited friends to a birthday party to bear witness to
her daughter's oversize 15-word vocabulary. By 17
months, Sahara could recite the alphabet, and at age
5, she wrote her first poem: "When I drink mother's
milk,/ my heart sweats with love."

Now 9, Sahara speaks French fluently, plays the
violin and piano, composes music, draws, paints and
has traveled extensively in Africa, Asia, Europe and
Australia with her mother, Elisabeth Sunday, a
photographer. Inspired by everything from fleeting
light caught in a stairwell, (Quick!/ Be an angel
walking out of the/ light that I see,/ before it fades
into a silent/ darkness), to tears and fish, she
continues to write verse.

Last year, HarperCollins paid Sahara a
mid-five-figure advance for a book of her poems and
illustrations. "If There Would Be No Light," a
113-page hardcover book with an initial printing of
15,000, came out in January.

Impressive, but on a 7 a.m. BART trip to school,
Sahara -- curly hair tightly pulled into a braid, toast in
hand -- doesn't sound like a prodigy or poet. She
sounds 9.

Audrey, she says, is the nicest teacher in the world.
The couches in their classroom have names, Mr.
Stripey and Mrs. Bouncy. They also have mice,
hamsters and Siamese fighting fish. The girl hamster
is in love with the boy mouse. So they think! The fish
are beautiful, oh my goodness, but one kid put two
together and the woman ate the man. It was a bad
relationship. "Bug!" she squeals, every time she
catches sight of a Volkswagen Bug.

Each weekday, Sahara and her mom leave their
West Oakland home and take BART to Daly City,
where Sahara catches a school bus to the wooded
33-acre campus of the Nueva School, a private
school for gifted children in Hillsborough.

Around 8:30 a.m. -- after Stardust, Tickles, Fuzzy
and the other pets have been properly greeted, after
the hamster has pooped on someone, after a tiny girl
in shiny pink clogs takes attendance -- class begins.

Audrey Fairchild, an obviously experienced teacher
and extremely pleasant woman, teaches the
third-graders two new letters in American Sign
Language. "If we're looking at you but not listening,
you can just sign shut up!" one boy blurts out.
Announcements are followed by show-and-tell.

A girl with wide eyes the color of a swimming pool
tells an elaborate story involving a castle, a magical
bubble and a machine gun. The class learns the word
"anachronism."

Nueva School is teeming with precocious children,
and teachers dislike singling out students. Sahara,
they will all say after a fashion, is one of the normal,
great kids at the school.

Like many other 9-year-olds, she likes playing tag,
sometimes grows frustrated with her friends and has
to be encouraged (six more bites!) to finish her lunch.
Her sweet smile shows off newly straightened teeth,
and she appears to be a genuinely nice kid. Asked
about her closest friends in the class, she
diplomatically names each person.

'HEIGHTENED MATURITY'

"She has an almost heightened maturity about not
wanting to be more wonderful than the next person,"
Fairchild said. Sahara's poems, she added,
occasionally make her cry. "She has an innate ability
to feel things deeply and a beautiful way of sharing
those feelings in language."

A slew of publications have printed stories about
Sahara, but she isn't allowed to read them until she is
13. Her mother doesn't want her to take the articles
too seriously, whether they're positive or not -- and
the press has been both. The New York Times
Sunday Magazine published an extensive four-page
spread Feb. 4, though the reporter seemed slightly
underwhelmed by Sahara's accomplishments. Some
critics have dismissed the poems as "too Hallmark,"
and the British press, especially, was snippy about
the size of Sahara's advance. "Art is valuable," her
mother said in response. "Everyone should get more
than they do."

The glamour of young Sahara's life has also raised
eyebrows. Sunday counts some celebrities among
her collectors, and a few (Bonnie Raitt, Bill Cosby)
contributed back-cover blurbs. Gloria Steinem wrote
the introduction.

There's also the matter of Sahara's famous father,
Johnny Spain, one of the San Quentin Six who stood
trial for the 1971 shootout at San Quentin Prison that
killed three guards and three prisoners. Spain was
convicted of murder in the uprising, but his conviction
was overturned, and he was released from prison in
1988. Sahara's mother, who divorced Spain in the
early '90s, refuses to say much about him: "It
mystifies me why it should be about him. He's not in
her life."

But those adult concerns are remote from this sunny
classroom where the class has set aside the
times-tables and homemade newspapers. A
half-dozen giggly girls are nibbling on their lunches
and playing the game "telephone."

SINGING IN THE CAR

Recess is followed by chorus, physical education and
art. Sahara, a member of the San Francisco Girls
Chorus, leaves school early for a rehearsal. Her
mother drives her and two older girls, who sit in the
back and sing all the way to the city.

Rehearsal ends, at last, at 6 p.m. Though her mother
can see a certain heaviness around her eyes, Sahara
claims she's not tired. She hasn't talked about writing
poetry at all today. But in the car, in the dark, she
says that when she writes poetry, she becomes
someone different.

"I'm touched by something and it goes very deep
inside of me. It touches my heart and my heart rings
and wants to answer it, so it replies with a poem. The
poem represents a thank-you," she says.

Then she giggles in her car seat and squirms. "Bug!"
she shouts, "Bug!"