Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Arlene Sardine by Chris Raschka

We don’t play this up much, but this actually marks the first appearance of Chris Raschka on our podcast. And WHATTA debut! This taps into my love of all picture books in which the protagonist gets eaten. But for Kate, she hyperfixates on the very semantics of the word “sardine”. How can you hope to become the thing that you already are? That little delve into the philosophical underpinnings of edible tiny fish is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to today’s discussion. Suffice to say, we diverge WIDELY on our interpretation of this book. In fact, we may be as different on our votes for this book as we have ever been.

Listen to the whole show here on Soundcloud or download it through iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, PlayerFM, Audible, Amazon Music, or your preferred method of podcast selection.

Show Notes:

If you’re curious about The Atlantic’s 65 Essential Children’s Books, feel free to read the list here.

Doggone it. Kate’s not wrong. While the book opens as a horizontal picture book, the text inside is entirely vertical. *sigh* No commitment to the bit.

Daniel Pinkwater and Scott Simon discuss the book on NPR here. And yes. You can still blame Scott for calling this “kiddie literature”. Even at the time, that term was considered gauche.

But truly the greatest write-up of this book happened on Monica Edinger’s Educating Alice blog back in 2012. You can read the entire post here and it remains, to this day, the be all and end all of all Arlene Sardine discussions and literature.

I also allude to the Blue Rose Girls post Chris Raschka and His Round-the-World Sardine “Arlene”  where Pinkwater weighs in.

We approved of the hand-lettered text, and were a bit glad it wasn’t in cursive (since parents of the future wouldn’t be able to read it easily).

As Kate would be the FIRST to inform you, a brisling is a small sardine. As such, Arlene is already a sardine. So the fact that Arlene wants to be a sardine is a moot point. She’s already achieved that goal.

This fish “looks like a Monday”. And you know precisely what Kate means by that.

Okay, folks. Is “thronging” an actual term? We would seriously like to know.

Kate does her research. This can? Named after a former Congressman. His name? Nelson Dingley.

I happen to mention the book Freya and the Snake which I reviewed here. Lord, I love that book.

Kate Recommends: The documentary Untold: Crimes & Penalties on Netflix

Betsy Recommends: Migraines! Particularly ocular and olfactory ones. I’ve been having them. Thank goodness I read the relatively recent New Yorker article The Great Migraine Mystery.

Filed under: Fuse 8 n' Kate