The Haitian-American darling Mabou Loiseau, who lives in Queens, New York, says she wants to be a firefighter, musician or actor when she grows up. Those are great ideas but with her keen intelligence and wide variety of interests perhaps she should consider U.N. Secretary-General, president of Harvard University or perhaps start her own company and grow it into a Fortune 100 leader.

Then again she might decide to become a world-class swimmer or musician. Recently Mabou took the New York City test for gifted and talented children and scored in the 99th percentile. Yet while building a platform to do it all, Mabou appears to still enjoy being a kid.

Mabou’s mother is a French teacher and her father is a Manhattan parking attendant working 16 hours every day to earn the money to provide the $1,500 a week needed to cover his daughter’s lessons in various arts and disciplines. Mabou speaks French, Creole and English at home, and is now studying Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic and Russian.

She told the New York Daily News recently that “Russian is my most favorite. I just hear something, and if I don't understand I say, 'What does that mean?'"

The little girl is in constant motion. When she is not working on languages her other interests include tap and ballet. She also plays the drums, harp, clarinet, violin, guitar and piano. During her quiet moments, Mabou enjoys ice-skating and swimming.

Her mother says Mabou wants to do all these things and that she and her husband don’t push her. Maybe so. One thing that is likely now that New York knows about their daughter's versatile brilliance is that her parents better get ready as the world is going to come to them soon to help groom their child prodigy.

(Photo: TOMAS BRAVO/Reuters/Landov)