“We have to eat, you know,” she says, only the slightest hint of resignation in her voice. Bills go unpaid because, when push comes to shove, food wins out. Running the errand would mean forgoing overtime pay that could go for groceries. It’s peak harvest time, and he often works until eight at night, applying pesticides on commercial farms for $14 an hour. But that will happen only if Jim finishes work early. She and Jim need to open a new bank account so they can make automatic payments instead of scrambling to pay in cash. On this particular afternoon Dreier is worried about the family van, which is on the brink of repossession. Congressional cuts to SNAP last fall of five billion dollars pared her benefits from $205 to $172 a month. She and her husband, Jim, pit one bill against the next-the phone against the rent against the heat against the gas-trying always to set aside money to make up for what they can’t get from the food pantry or with their food stamps, issued by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The fear of being unable to feed her children hangs over Dreier’s days. “I eat lunch if there’s enough,” she says. She’s gone through most of the food she got last week from a local food pantry her own lunch will be the bits of potato left on the kids’ plates. She shakes the last seven chicken nuggets onto a battered baking sheet, adds the remnants of a bag of Tater Tots and a couple of hot dogs from the fridge, and slides it all into the oven.
Keagan ignores the school breakfast on offer and is so hungry by lunchtime that Dreier picks through the dregs of her freezer in hopes of filling him and his little sister up.
These books have won several awards, including the GA Peach Award.Dreier knows her gambit might backfire, and it does.
The books she is most successful for in teenage eyes are The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay. She currently lives in Connecticut with her family and a pair of feral kittens they adopted from their backyard. Suzanne also has a rhyming picture book illustrated by Mike Lester entitled When Charlie McButton Lost Power. What you might find.? Well, that’s the story of Gregor the Overlander, the first book in her five-part series, The Underland Chronicles. In New York City, you’re much more likely to fall down a manhole than a rabbit hole and, if you do, you’re not going to find a tea party. Thinking one day about Alice in Wonderland, she was struck by how pastoral the setting must seem to kids who, like her own, lived in urban surroundings. While working on a Kids WB show called Generation O! she met children’s author James Proimos, who talked her into giving children’s books a try. She also co-wrote the critically acclaimed Rankin/Bass Christmas special, Santa, Baby! Most recently she was the Head Writer for Scholastic Entertainment’s Clifford’s Puppy Days. For preschool viewers, she penned multiple stories for the Emmy-nominated Little Bear and Oswald. She has worked on the staffs of several Nickelodeon shows, including the Emmy-nominated hit Clarissa Explains it All and The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo. Since 1991, Suzanne Collins has been busy writing for children’s television. Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
0 kommentar(er)
