Mallory on Strike Read online

  Mallory also feels that she has no privacy. In my family, privacy was important to my sister and me, and we were lucky because we had our own rooms. It’s too bad we didn’t have two back seats in our station wagon, because that would have solved a problem on long car trips. Each of us wanted our own space in the car. In order to create it, we would divide the back seat in half, and we weren’t allowed to cross the line. If we did, a fight usually ensued. Neither Jane nor I ever went on strike, but our parents frequently threatened to pull the car over until we could settle down.

  Happy reading,

  * * *

  The author gratefully acknowledges

  Jahnna Beecham

  and

  Malcolm Hillgartner

  for their help in

  preparing this manuscript.

  About the Author

  ANN MATTHEWS MARTIN was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane.

  There are currently over 176 million copies of The Baby-sitters Club in print. (If you stacked all of these books up, the pile would be 21,245 miles high.)In addition to The Baby-sitters Club, Ann is the author of two other series, Main Street and Family Tree. Her novels include Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), Here Today, A Dog’s Life, On Christmas Eve, Everything for a Dog, Ten Rules for Living with My Sister, and Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life (So Far). She is also the coauthor, with Laura Godwin, of the Doll People series.

  Ann lives in upstate New York with her dog and her cats.

  Copyright © 1991 by Ann M. Martin.

  Cover art by Hodges Soileau

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  First edition, September 1991

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-69040-9