Strike Two

by Amy Goldman Koss

Overview

Summer has always been Gwen's favorite time of year. But this summer, everything has gone wrong. The newspaper's union workers are on strike and it seems like the whole town-including Gwen's family-has taken up sides. Sick of moping around and wondering when things are going to get back to normal, Gwen decides to take matters into her own hands and end the fighting once and for all.
 
“Gwen is a wonderfully spunky kid who has real problems, creative solutions, and the guts to admit that she has a lot to learn about others' needs.” —Booklist

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101659410
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	02/24/2003
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	279 KB
Age Range:	10 Years

About the Author

Amy Goldman Koss is the author of the critically acclaimed novels The Girls, The Trouble with Zinny Weston, and How I Saved Hannukah. Ms. Koss both wrote and illustrated Curious Creatures in Peculiar Places, a selection of the 1989 John Burroughs List of Outstanding Nature Books for Children, and Where Fish Go in Winter, a Book of the Month Club Selection. She lives in Glendale, California, with her husband, two children, and many pets.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 4-7-Gwen can't be more excited as a summer of softball stretches ahead of her. She and her best friend/cousin, Jess, play for the Press Gazette, the city's newspaper, which employs both of their fathers. The girls have been "practicing forever," and building a championship team this season is well within their sights. What isn't anticipated is the strike that divides their families: Gwen's dad is "labor" and his brother is "management." At first, Gwen enjoys having her father home, available to shuttle her to practice and the movies, and she even accompanies him on the high-spirited picket line. He assures her that the dispute won't last long: "By tomorrow they'll be on their knees, begging us to come back." The mood darkens and tension builds, however, as the strike continues, ultimately disrupting relationships and, of course, the softball season. Characterization is strong, revealed through Gwen's first-person narrative and solid dialogue. In a believable plot, the young people finally are able to begin the healing process in the community-with a little help from their irascible grandmother. Koss has created realistic characters that young people will both recognize and relate to. They will also recognize the influence that the larger adult world has, and understand that they are not powerless.-Lee Bock, Glenbrook Elementary School, Pulaski, WI Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

A bitter strike creates a family split possibly beyond even baseball's power to mend, in this engaging tale from the author of Stranger in Dadland (p. 185). Gwen is eager for a summer of softball with teammate, cousin, and closest friend Jess, but that field of dreams loses its luster when the local newspaper that sponsors their team is hit by a strike. Gwen and Jess learn that their twin dads are on opposite sides of the dispute-a fact that takes on more and more weight as the strike goes on, tensions mount, and ugly incidents begin to occur. At first, Gwen has no idea what it all means, but as a new "us vs. them" attitude polarizes even the children in management and labor families, as she overhears talk of scabs and scare tactics, and as she sees widening rifts develop within her family, even between her own parents, annoyance gives way to confusion, fear, and despondence. Soon even she and Jess are on the outs. So what is there to do but organize a game between the strikers' kids and managements'? Fortunately for the tale's credibility, though news of the strike's settlement happens to come during that game, sparking a jubilant, all-is-forgiven celebration, it's really a coincidence. The real victory here is the convincing way Gwen inches past that feeling of powerlessness to the realization that, while not all problems have simple solutions, there's nothing stopping her from stepping up to the plate and taking some healthy swings. (Fiction. 11-13)

Kirkus Reviews