Chicken (review)

Controversial and appealing, Chicken, taken from Canadian author Kathy Stinson’s book “101 ways to dance”, tells the story of a teenage girl who plays a daring body-contact game with a boy from church. With Stinson’s story, young adults will find an engaging story about sexual curiosity.

When the teenage girl finishes painting the church basement, she remains alone with Bram, the new guy from British Columbia. The boy had received a letter stating that he will be a father. She knows that involving with him means troubles. However, she accepts playing Chicken with him. What are the rules? They place one finger on each other’s foreheads and go down their bodies until one says stop. Bram stopped, but she wants the game to keep on going. Just like her mother said, she is asking for it.

In Chicken, Kathy Stinson introduces an interesting topic for adolescents, curiosity for sex. Thoughts are racing in the teenage girl’s mind. But who can blame her? The awakening of sexual curiosity is a common matter in adolescence.

In most of it, Chicken is written in a thought-provoking dialogue style. The length of the story is quite short, but it can’t help but being attractive for adolescents.

With a short-sized but captivating narrative and a topic more than interesting for teenagers, Chicken becomes a must-read short story for young adults.