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U.S.S.R. Petrovichi is a small town about fifty-five miles south of Smolensk and about two hundred fifty miles southwest of Moscow. When Asimov was three, his parents emigrated with him to the United States, at the invitation and sponsorship of his mother's older half-brother. They settled in Brooklyn where Asimov's father, handicapped by his lack of English and of job experience, bought a candy store in 1926. The candy store, and its successors, became a major part of Asimov's existence. ''It was open seven days a week and eighteen hours a day," he reported in his autobiography, "so my father and mother had to take turns running it, and I had to pitch in, too."
The other important fact of Asimov's youth was his precocity. He had an unusual ability to learn and, as he later discovered, an unusually retentive memory. They were to be major assets in his life and career. He taught himself to read at the age of five, entered the first grade before he was six (his mother lied about his age), and became the brightest student in his class early and continuously, even though he skipped half a year of kindergarten, half a year of first grade, and half a year of third grade, and changed schools a couple of times.
Asimov's schoolboy practice was to read all his school-books the first couple of days after he got them and then not refer to them again. He acquired a reputation as a child prodigy and a sense of his own superiority that he didn't mind letting other people see. They did not add to his popularity he was considered a smart-alecky kid but he did not have much association with others anyway. His work in the candy store kept him busy after school, and the seven-day week meant that he and his parents never visited anyone or had anyone visit them.
Asimov recalled that he was orphaned by the candy store (since he was deprived of his parents' companionship) as well as protected by it (since he knew where his parents were at all times). The candy store constricted and shaped his life until he left home. It also meant that he grew up largely in the company of adults when he was in the store, or in the company of books when he was not. Both no doubt contributed to his precocity.
Asimov completed junior high school in two years instead of three and entered Boys High School of Brooklyn, which at the time was a selective high school that had an excellent reputation for mathematics. He was twelve and a half upon entering, two and a half years younger than the normal age of fifteen. He continued to be sheltered: he had almost no contact with girls, as he might have had at a co-educational school. But in the world encapsulated in his autobiography almost everything happened for the best how could it not have happened for

 
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