Summary Of School's Out For Summer By Anna Quindlen

As school comes to a closing, children start to get excited. They get to play outside, sleep in, and also not have to worry about tedious school work. But for some, summer vacation isn’t such a good thing. In Anna Quindlen's essay “School’s Out for Summer,” she explains how summer can be a struggle for some families. When school is in session, kids get lunch and if they come to school early, breakfast too. When school ends, families that can’t afford to feed their kids, have to find different way to get food. Quindlen does a great job persuading the readers as to why summer break isn’t such a good thing. In her essay she uses statistics, provides solutions people are trying to do, and she also uses pathos in her essay.

Throughout the essay,

Quindlen provides the reader with many facts about the topic. By doing this she is trying to put the reader in the perspective of the people who can’t afford food during the summer times. For example, “In 1999 twelve million children were hungry or at risk of going hungry.” Another example is, “In 2000, requests for food assistance from families increased almost 20 percent.” This makes the essay effective because the reader knows about how serious this issue is.
Quindlen doesn’t only let people know the facts, she includes solutions people are trying to do to stop this issue. She says, “Washington D.C., has done better than any other city in the country in feeding hungry kids, sending fire trucks into housing projects to distribute leaflets about lunch locations, running a referral hotline and radio announcements.” Including this into her essay gives the reader an idea of what they can do to help if they want to.
Also, the author includes pathos into the essay. This makes the reader feel sad or pity toward the people that can’t afford meals to eat. In the text she says, “... she had three kids who ate breakfast and lunch at school, her food stamps had been held up because of some bureaucratic snafu, she was considering whether to pilfer food from the senior center where she worked as an aide.” This is effective to include in her essay because it makes that reader upset about the topic and makes them want to do something about it.
In conclusion, Anna Quindlen’s essay is an effective piece of writing that includes all of the elements to a good persuasive paper. She had stats, solutions, and even included pathos in the paper. By using all of these things, she makes the persuasion effective to anyone who reads it.