The Young and Prodigious

T.S. is a child prodigy with a passion for cartography and scientific inventions. He lives with his family on a ranch in Montana, his mother is an entomologist, his father a cowboy out of time, his 14-year-old sister dreams of becoming "Miss America". His mismatched twin brother died a year earlier while experimenting together with a rifle in the barn at home. This event is not talked about in the family. One day, T.S. Spivet receives a call from the Smithsonian Institution informing him that he is to be awarded the prestigious Baird Prize for his invention of a perpetual motion machine and that he is invited to a reception to give a speech on the occasion. Without telling anyone, he steals away from home and travels on a freight train as a stowaway to Washington, D.C., to receive the prize....