• Age: 12 to 18
• Grade: 8 to 12
• Reading age: 13 to 18

A quirky collection of stories about teens in lust and in love. From the first stirrings of same-sex desire to paternity questions around a teen pregnancy, 101 Ways to Dance reflects the spectrum of teen sexuality from the sweet to the scary.

Kathy Stinson is a familiar name in children’s literature. She wrote the award-winning Red is Best and Big or Little?—two of the first picture books for preschoolers in Canada. Both were a huge success and have since achieved international acclaim. Red is Best 25th Anniversary Edition was released in 2006 a newly illustrated Big or Little? was published in 2009. Kathy’s latest book, The Man with the Violin (2013), was greeted with rave reviews, including starred reviews in Kirkus and uill & uire. Illustrated by Duan Petricic, this beautifully evocative picture book tells the true story of world-renowned violinist, Joshua Bell, who conducted an experiment by anonymously playing his priceless violin in the Washington D.C. subway station. Kathy grew up in Toronto. “My love affair with books began as a child,” she says. “I remember regular visits to the library, getting stacks of books to read.” She still has a notebook of stories that she wrote when she was in grade four. She believes that reading a lot is the key to becoming a good writer. In the early 1970s Kathy attended university while teaching elementary school. In 1981, she took a course called “How to write and get published.” The titles she has published in the years since range from picture books to young adult novels, from historical fiction chapter books to short stories in the horror genre. 2008 sees the publication of her first brand-new picture book in sixteen years! Kathy enjoys visiting schools across Canada, and especially talking with fellow writers. In 1987 she traveled to England as part of an exchange of Canadian and British children’s authors. She has helped students across Canada pursue their own creative projects through the Writers in Electronic Residence program, and in many communities has conducted writing workshops for children and for adults. When she’s not busy writing or reading, Kathy is a self-proclaimed jigsaw puzzle addict. Her children now grown, she lives with her partner, editor Peter Carver, in a hamlet not far from Guelph, Ontario.

Kathy Stinson's profile page

This book will appeal to older teenage readers of both sexes who are making choices about their own sexuality.

Resource Links

Finding a book that portrays positive sexuality for teens is more difficult than people may think. With stories ranging from sweet to bittersweet to fantastically erotic, this book should be in teen sex-ed programs across the country!

Tea and Tomes blog

Exudes promise, and it delivers! Each story is simply as beautiful as the one before.

Canadian Children's Book News

These stories are sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, and sometimes disturbing, but always well and sensitively told.

Hi-Rise

These stories are not graphic, they are beautiful and sexy.

Off the Shelf

101 Ways to Dance

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 Dylan 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

101 Ways to Dance

What if you lusted after somone that you shouldn’t? What if you wanted to touch someone that you couldn’t? This collection of 14 stories explores love, longing and more.