By April Xu

Told from a child’s perspective, Kimberly Tso’s new children’s book offers a playful way to connect kids with Chinatown’s history and heritage.

Once upon a time, inside the Chinatown Fair arcade on Mott Street, lived a legendary tic-tac-toe game player. With just 50 cents, visitors could challenge her to a game of tic-tac-toe. If they were lucky enough to win — a rare feat — they’d walk away with a big bag of fortune cookies. But the player was nearly unbeatable; no one can recall her ever losing. The player, Lillie, was a chicken.

For Kimberly Tso, who grew up in New York and spent weekends visiting her father in Chinatown, the arcade and especially the tic-tac-toe chicken, remains a treasured childhood memory filled with fun, laughter, and a sense of wonder. That nostalgia resonates not only within her but with many New Yorkers and out-of-towners alike who visited the Chinatown arcade in the 1970s and ’80s and witnessed a chicken behind a glass enclosure pecking her way to tic-tac-toe victories.

Now a writer based in San Gabriel Valley, Los Angeles, Tso has transformed this slice of her childhood and a quirky piece of New York’s urban history into her first children’s book, Tic-Tac-Toe Chicken, published this August and shared as part of this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival family celebration through the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA). Told from a child’s perspective, the book offers a playful, lighthearted way of connecting kids to Chinatown history and community heritage.

To read the entire article: https://documentedny.com/2025/10/02/tic-tac-toe-chicken-chinatown/