A review by taralorraine
Tradition by Brendan Kiely

4.0

I enjoyed this story, and when I finished it yesterday I gave it four stars. Then, later that afternoon, at the end of an assembly at school it was announced that “Could the high school boys please help pick up chairs.” On top of this a few teachers went around encouraging young men to go help, passing right by the capable young ladies right next to them. I watched this for a minute, not a single girl was helping. Why should they? No one asked them to. No one, apparently, expected them to. In that moment I thought of this book- and although this was a much smaller scale issue, it’s still an issue. So I walked over and grabbed a couple of chairs. (Almost instantly a nice young man offered to take them from me and I politely declined.) I don’t know if anyone saw or cared, but maybe someone did, maybe some girl saw that it wasn’t just a guy thing. But, either way, no matter how small, I did something.