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The Great Skinner Strike
Macmillan,
1983
When the four Skinner children and their father arrive home one
October afternoon to find their resident wife-and-mother on strike and walking a
picket line in front of their house, they begin to suspect that they are not
quite the "ordinary middle class family" they had thought.
Fourteen-year-old
Jenny Skinner relates the hilarious story of the nineteen days of social
conflict and domestic disaster. Mrs. Skinner makes demands, lives in a
tent on the front lawn, organizes dozens of women into a group called Wives/MAD,
and draws the attention of newspapers, television talk shows, and local
crazies. Mr. Skinner and the children try to prove they can manage without
her, only to be tripped up by the dirty laundry and convenience food
catastrophes. When they create the ominously named organization CHAOS -
Children and Husbands Against Offensive Strikes - the family, if not the strike,
appears doomed. It is then Jenny and her sister Marcia, beginning to see
things in a new way, instigate a strike of their own....
In The
Great Skinner Strike, Stephanie S. Tolan tells a funny story with a serious
theme - family liberation. She celebrates the American family as she challenges
some of its strongest conventions, inviting self-examination as well as
laughter.
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