| Review |

by Lisa Doucet

With its eye-catching cover design and intriguing title, Kathy Stinson’s new collection of short stories exudes promise… and it delivers! Within its pages, readers encounter snapshots of contemporary teens who are wrestling with hard truths, making profound discoveries about those close to them and about themselves, and learning (and becoming more surely who they want to be). Many of the stories explore different aspects of friendship while others focus on romantic relationships and on the characters’ emerging sense of themselves and their sexuality. From Joel who is dying of cancer in “Everybody Loves a Clown” to Sarah who can’t understand her forbidden feelings for her cousin Dyland in “On Flagpole Hill” to Steve who tries to finally tell his best friend that he is gay in “Ferris Wheel”, all of the characters, and the situations they find themselves in, will linger with readers.

This exquisite compilation does not suffer from any variation in quality: each story is simply as beautiful as the one before! They are fresh, candid, brief and insightful. They avoid didacticism and yet provide much room for reflection, and for simply savouring. Despite the fact that several of them give only the merest glimpse into the life of the teen in question, they each manage to capture a feeling, a thought, an idea that remains with the reader. 101 Ways to Dance is a small gem that will hopefully find its way into the hands, and hearts, of hordes of teen readers.

First appeared in Canadian Children's Book News, Fall 2006. Used with permission.

KATHY STINSON, Canadian Author of Books for Young People

101 Ways to Dance

| Review |