Any author can tell you times they've struggled with their writing. Poor Shakespeare has the words, the struggle comes in the effort it takes the tiny insect to manipulate a fountain pen and get the actual letters down on paper. Not to fear though, for he is rewarded when the children come to know and love his stories. And when Shakespeare becomes too old to physically handle the writing process - he then becomes a teller of tales. Kids in grades Kdg through 4 should enjoy this spunky little guy!

Some readers may be pleased with the bluntness and directness with which the author described what happened to the snared Arlene, from her flopping around on the trawler's deck to her being cooked in a can.
Some might think that this story was a laudable and unblinking effort to let children know, without any sugarcoating, what at least one part of the real world is like. I found this story to be revolting. My reaction was not due to my being squeamish about the subject or a refusal to face the truth. I have eaten many a sardine in my time,( one of which may have been Arlene), usually on crackers. The latest one was this morning, during a hike into the Selkirk Mountains of northern Idaho. It was delicious and I did not feel at all guilty as I gulped it down. Neither was the cause of my revulsion the fact that this was a children's story. I have no problem with telling children the truth about the world in so far as we understand it.
One of the great truths of the World is that life lives upon life. (Perhaps somewhere there is a little Blue-Green Alga who believes that he has evaded this way of making a living, having ... energy from the sun, but where does he think he got his CO2 with which to make carbohydrates?) No, what revolted me was the author's obvious message that poor little Arlene Sardine was predestined for the blue point special at your neighborhood sandwich shop. It was clear that the only purpose that she ever had in life was to serve as a tasty treat for Mankind. This story turns a living organism into a commodity, whose purpose in life, which it looks forward to, is to be eaten by human beings.
There is no hint or inkling from this book that Arlene might have lived out her life (and death) in any other manner. She might, for example, have become food for a Salmon, and it, food for another fish, and so on in the great round of life. She might have lived to procreate and therefore served to perpetuate her species, etc. etc. This story may true in one sense, but it is false in another because the child reader is taught not to confront the facts and learn how to deal with them, but to become desensitized to them. No, sadly, Arlene served only to perpetuate one of the greatest myths of our culture, and that is that all other living creatures have only one purpose, that of serving man, and that they enjoy doing so. In short, this story converted Arlene from a fellow life form to a commodity, to be used or discarded by Man as he sees fit. This is an important part of the mind set that has set our culture on a collision course with Nature, as Daniel Quinn brilliantly describes in Ishmael. The disastrous results we see all around us - atmosphere and water poisoned with over 70,000 synthetic chemicals, a population of 6.2 billion, surging beyond the limited carrying capacity of the Earth, Global Warming, just to mention a few of our more minor problems.
The great question that our ancient ancestors had to face , ( and contemporary traditional peoples still do ),was that life lives off life, and how do they handle that fact? They coped with it in a manner that is in stark contrast to way our culture approaches the subject. What is astonishing is that they consistently came up with similar or even identical answers. Even more remarkable is the fact that they labored under a more difficult dilemma than we. They regarded other living creatures, not as commodities, but, on the contrary, as fellow travelers or even as elder brethren from whom they could gather much wisdom. Yet they had to kill their brethren in order to live. They solved their dilemma through the worldwide myth of the Animal Master. They believed that their prey animals were controlled by a prototypical animal spirit and that if they treated the animals with respect as they hunted them and afterwards dealt with their remains, the Animal Master would insure that the animals will not really die, but will reappear the next year and offer themselves to the hunters again. Thus these ancient peoples symbolically demonstrated that they understood and accepted the great round of life and death that perpetuates and informs the world. Our culture may consider this myth to be nonsense, but the test of a myth (which Joseph Campbell once defined mischievously as a lie that tells the truth) is: does it serve the people who live by it well? The Animal Master myth has served traditional peoples, probably for hundreds of thousands, if not for millions of years, and enabled them to live in harmony with the rest of the world without destroying either it or themselves. Our culture is 7 - 10,000 years old. Another of our foremost myths is that of "unlimited growth". Inspired by myths that defy biological principals, what chance do you give our culture to last as long as that of traditional peoples?
Turning Nature into a commodity leads to the mentality of trying to patent living organisms or the dismissal of difficult moral issues. For instance, I happen to be pro-choice, but I do not pretend that there is no troubling ethical issue with respect to abortion. This book helps to propel us down a slippery slope that leads to such bizarre outcomes as the patenting of life forms, and the genetic engineering of the very food we eat without consideration of of the inevitable unforeseen consequences. Will we learn the error of our myths in time to remedy them? Not if our self-distructive myths continue to be passed on to the next generation in stories like Arlene Sardine.

Arlene, the beautifully illustrated brisling, wants to be a sardine. She swims into a net and doesn't eat anything for three days in preparation of becoming a sardine. Arlene dies and the rest of the story explains how people turn Arlene into everything she wanted to be. What's not okay here? Manipulation by the author to try and convince the reader that it was okay for Arlene to want to become a sardine. That Arlene would intentionally want to get caught in a net, starve herself, and die is so misleading for a picture book that wants to explain, realisticly, how sardines are made. Raschka attempts to comfort the reader and soften Arlene's death by including lines after her death like, "...she was put on ice, in a box, with her friends," "I'll be Arlene felt well rested on the conveyer belt" and "I wonder if Arlene was a little nervous for the final inspection." It's obvious, this isn't a story about grieving but it is a story about death. It's not the book you pull off the shelf when you want to comfort a child who lost her pet goldfish. Yet, Arlene's death would have been better explained (and more appropriate) if it were told with the same honesty that explains the process that makes her suitable for human consumption. Raschka's weakness to cushion Arlene's death is the only flaw to this story. How unfortunate because every other aspect of the story is right on the mark. Illustrations are magnificant, the format well designed, a perfect balance of story and illustrations. Raschka is a true talent, one of the best children's book authors/illustrators of this decade. He has already redeemed himself, in the eyes of this reviewer, by creating yet another amazingly terrific book, "Like Likes Like."

I have heard it stated that there is a very thin line between genius and insanity. Arlene the Sardine is very close to this line in dealing with the issue of death. Those who are scared of the potential of suicide might be very frightened by this book and would rate it low accordingly. The book, about a young fish who wants to become a sardine deals with death in an exceptionally playful manner... so playful that some could consider it macabre. This is a book one will either love or hate. Though, I was somewhat disturbed by the book... I believe that the book is exceedingly well done, with beautiful illustrations, and a playful narrative. It seemed reminiscent of the fairy tales of old... which were far more dark than today's Disney versions. It is a book definitely worth checkig out from your local library.

Crazy James