Arlene Sardine
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- $69.00
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- $69.00
Descripción editorial
So, you want to be a sardine?
Once there was a fish named Arlene, who wanted to be a sardine. She wanted to be a sardine just like the silvery, salty fish that you see in those little tins at the grocery store.
With the bold brushstrokes of his vibrant illustrations, Chris Raschka follows Arlene's journey from a fjord to a big net to a briny bath aboard a fishing boat. And he reveals just how to get packed like a sardine!
This fixed-layout ebook, which preserves the design and layout of the original print book, features read-along narration.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Raschka is at it again, setting picture-book precedent in this witty fjord-to-can account of how one little fish became a sardine. In addition to the deliciously eccentric subject matter, there's also an anomalous plot development: midway through the tale, the heroine expires. When readers first meet Arlene, she's a happy little fish with "about ten hundred thousand friends" who dreams of becoming a sardine. Then, rather abruptly, she's caught in a purse net and dumped on the deck of a fishing boat. Far from being a gloomy event, however, Raschka treats her demise matter-of-factly as just another step toward Arlene's ultimate goal. He then explains how Arlene becomes a sardine: she's sorted, salted, smoked and canned, covered in olive oil, hermetically sealed and finally cooked. Raschka's well-researched text is never ponderous; he opts instead for a playful, poetic approach ("Then she was smoked, delicately. She was delicately smoked. Delicately smoked was she"). The brushwork in his sea-colored watercolors is all swoops and swirls, with such piquant touches as a pink arrow pointing Arlene out in a crowd, and bright-eyed fish with eyes closed for the second half of the story. To top it off, Raschka has turned the cover art sideways and added labels such as "easy-open book" and "net wt. 12 oz." so that the book itself resembles a sardine can. Raschka delivers an uplifting message that death is a regenerative part of the life cycle. All ages.
