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- - - - - - - - - - E D I T O R ' S_N O T E Look for excerpts from Anne Lamott's new book, "Traveling Mercies," on Fridays; Word by Word, Lamott's biweekly Thursday column, will return March 4. - - - - - - - - - - T A B L E_T A L K Is your child's teacher giving you 'tude? Overwhelmed by PTA and parent-teacher conference meetings? Talk back in the Mothers area of Table Talk ___________________ Love Sallie Tisdale's "Second Thoughts"? Buy her books at BarnesandNoble.com!
R E C E N T L Y The city of lost children The feminist queen of the Middle East What is Victoria's secret? Lichen Stop using our children BROWSE THE SECOND THOUGHTS ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mamafesto
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A SARDINE'S STORY | PAGE 1, 2
In fact, when I first read "Arlene Sardine," I read it as a painless educational story about sardines. I learned about thronging and brislings and grading machines ("When Arlene reached the big packing room, she was picked up and put into a little can, a 1/4 dingley can.") Then, I read it as a manifesto about food. ("Arlene was covered in oil, olive oil, closed up with no air inside, hermetically, and cooked in her can.") And only after that did I read this book as a story about death. ("Here, on the deck of the fishing boat, Arlene died.") Several times in between, I read Raschka's prose the way I sometimes read Margaret Wise Brown and Dr. Seuss, for the pleasure of simply strung words flung cheerfully across colorful drawings. "Since it's been published, I've had to squirm quite a bit, talking a lot, defending it," says Raschka now. "And I realized that I don't like to talk about death with kids. I was nudged by my own book to talk about it. It is 'non-speaking,' which is the biggest teaching adults do to children, and for me a good part of the book is simply to jolt us all into just talking about it." Needless to say, the critical reaction to "Arlene Sardine" has been mixed. Most reviews have been quite positive and taken the book as seriously as any adult work. Raschka's illustrations are "irresistibly beautiful," "oddly appealing," "seductively and deceptively" innocent, say reviewers. His language is "playful, poetic" and "clear and simple"; it "bristles with nonchalance, but makes its points with panache." But even the good reviews have carried the caveat that small children (especially those famous "very sensitive" children some people worry so much about) might be disturbed both by Arlene's death and by the inescapable message that the food we eat is the remains of living creatures -- creatures that might even have names. As one reviewer remarked, the book can be read as "very happy" or "very sad" or "very gross," depending on your point of view. The concern buried, not so obliquely, in the fear that children will be disturbed by the book's content is the patronizing belief that children can't handle the simple truths of their own everyday lives. It is the adults who are squeamish in the face of hard facts here. They find it easy enough to feed the kids tuna fish sandwiches, but not to tell them what a tuna fish is. The real squeamishness may be in finding out the kids already know. One odd review in the San Jose Mercury News complained that the book presented a "sweet, pastel" picture of fish-packing plants that is far from the grisly reality -- and then went on to complain about being forced to consider the grisly reality at all. "Will the shock effect of a dead hero do any damage to unsuspecting children?" another reviewer wrote, worried about those sensitive children again. Then there's the reviewer at the Monterey County (Calif.) Herald, who noted in deadpan prose that "Arlene's story should be of some interest locally as Monterey was once the sardine capital of the Western Hemisphere." While some reviewers called the story of Arlene "creative," "original and hip," "witty and upbeat" -- a story with an "uplifting message that death is a regenerative part of the life cycle" -- others saw it as "a take-off on sentimental anthropomorphism in children's literature" and yet others as a "defiance of audience definitions." The respected journal Booklist called it "a bad joke." Booklist, I think, doth protest too much. The editors went so far as to suggest that only an award-winning, "well-respected author-illustrator" could "get away with getting something like this published." Booklist only prints good reviews; the specially boxed negative review given to "Arlene Sardine" was an unusual and significant exception -- "done," said a spokesperson for the journal, "when a book we normally would have simply rejected has gotten positive critical attention elsewhere." In other words, when they're afraid a lot of people seem to be disagreeing with the editors' opinions. Raschka himself is enjoying the book's success -- its publisher, Orchard Books, says it's selling "very, very well" -- and getting over his nervousness at reading it to groups of kids. Raschka himself has had children request the book more than once, seemingly unconcerned with the agenda adults bring to this work. Raschka's own 3-year-old son, Ingo, is currently interested in where babies (specifically, Ingo) come from and how they come out of there, so sardines aren't high on Raschka's worry list anymore. Instead, he's reading a biography of Freud. "One of the great things about Freud was his careful listening to children, his careful honoring of children and their experience." It's a model Raschka wants to follow. One significant aspect made blunt in Arlene's story is that she begins as a fish, a brisling, and ends as a sardine -- her death literally changes her into something new. This, along with death's inevitability, is the central truth we find difficult to convey to children -- because, I believe, we are only slowly facing it ourselves. Here, children can help adults. This fall, I began gently preparing my daughter for the inevitable death of our elderly dog, a dear animal she has lived with since she was a toddler. I can barely speak of his coming death without tears. How will it be for her?
After I spoke, she was quiet for a few minutes, obviously deep in thought.
"After he's dead," she finally said, "can I get a puppy?"
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