Karen Coats

1
Karen Coats Fish Stories

• What does Coats suggest that students in a
  childrens literature course learn?
• They learn more about ideology and how the
  aesthetic practices of literary representation
  transform culture more than in any other course
  they take (405).
• They take apart the very stories that they used,
  that cultures use, to put themselves together
  (405).
• They see how ideas of capitalism and imperialism
  get weeded to moral narratives (405).

2
Karen Coats Fish Stories

• What does Coats suggest that students in a
  childrens literature course learn?
• They trace how piety and domesticity as values
  for girsl are undercut by tomboy figures (405).
• They learn to think both developmentally and
  paralogically, to figure out why texts like The
  Giving Tree and Love You Forever, which they
  may find ideologically repugnant, nevertheless
  make them cry (405).

3
Karen Coats Fish Stories

• What does Coats suggest that students in a
  childrens literature course learn?
• They engage in difficult problems if texts
  like Curious George and The Story of Babar do
  have the racist and colonialist implications that
  they seem to have, should we continue to hold
  them up as cultural icons worth keeping? (406).

4
Karen Coats Fish Stories

• What is Coats purpose in writing this article?
• I invite you into my classroom as we read three
  fish stories to demonstrate the methodological
  pluralism and literacy challenges one might
  explore through childrens texts (406).

5
Karen Coats Fish Stories

• What approach does Coats use to teach Chris
  Raschkas Arlene Sardine?
• She asks her class to discuss academic freedom
  and censorship by teaching Arlene Sardine, a
  text that challenges what she terms her students
  liberalism, noting that prior to reading the
  text, her students were convinced of their
  ability to tolerate all sorts of ideas and
  worldviews (406).

6
Karen Coats Fish Stories

• How do Coats students react?

• This book, they shout, is not for children!
  (406).
• My students agree that, although we may teach
  children about the processes of fishing and
  packing fish, we may not do so by introducing one
  of the fish in question by name (406).

7
Karen Coats Fish Stories

• How does Coats encourage her students to think
  further about the topic?
• I then ask them if they would censor this book
  (406).
• In order to think about ways around censoring the
  book outright, the students come up with
  populations who might like the book
• Vegetarians presumably to encourage their
  children not to eat canned fish
• Farmers and fishermen whose children need to
  their parents work in a positive light

8
Karen Coats Fish Stories

• How does Coats encourage her students to think
  further about the topic?
• One student notes that if we view Arlenes death
  as metaphoric (i.e., not real but symbolic, as in
  a parable), then she is a hero (407).
• Coats also encourages students to think about how
  knowing the fishs name making it a subject
  might impact their reading (407).

9
Karen Coats Fish Stories

• How does Coats encourage her students to think
  further about the topic?
• Coats notes that Arlene, rather than resist
  being essentialized and suffering the normative
  fate for brislings, embraces and celebrates that
  fate (407).
• Note essentialized means being reduced to the
  supposed conditions of ones being. For
  instance, we essentialize men when we make the
  assumption that all men will want to play sports
  because thats what guys do. However, here,
  Coats suggests that Arlene embraces her fate to
  become a canned fish because thats what
  brislings do.

10
Karen Coats Fish Stories

• How do Coats students benefit from this sort of
  analysis?
• My students begin to see that one way to fight
  censorship is to improve our literacy, to expand
  our reading skills and practices (407).
• If we only read the words on the page, this
  truly is a cruel story. But if we read it
  ironically, we can see it as a fable speaking out
  against the eating of animals (407).
• Coats goes on to suggest other readings and their
  benefits.

11
Karen Coats Fish Stories

• For Rainbow Fish, Coats picked a text that she
  thought students would have enjoyed as children,
  but might see differently as adults. This is the
  opposite of what she attempted with Arlene
  Sardine.

12
Karen Coats Fish Stories

• What is the initial reaction that students have
  to the text?
• They contend that The Rainbow Fish is a
  beautiful book about sharing (408).
• However, Coats asks them to look again, arguing
  that there is no textual evidence that the
  rainbow fish is selfish when asked to pull a
  scale off its body and give it to another fish,
  it simply refuses. The rebuffed fish then
  spreads the vicious rumor that the rainbow fish
  is vain and selfish (408).

13
Karen Coats Fish Stories

• Coats suggests that the actual message of the
  text is that conformity is to be prized above
  every other desire not until full conformity
  is achieved can there be anything like community
  (406).

• At this point, Coats discusses a phenomenon with
  which I am very familiar My students are
  initially saddened by the loss of this text
  (408).

14
Dr. Tarbox Enters the Dialogue

• One of the most important things to understand
  about literary criticism is that it is a
  DIALOGUE. Scholars make their assertions based
  on evidence from the text, but not everyone will
  agree on what evidence to use or how to interpret
  that evidence.
• For instance, I see two details in The Rainbow
  Fish that Dr. Coats leaves out of her discussion.
  The first is the set of adjectives that Pfister
  uses to describe the Rainbow Fishs attitude,
  proud and silent (np).

15
Dr. Tarbox Enters the Dialogue

• The second detail occurs when the little blue
  fish asks for one of the Rainbow Fishs scales.
  While I agree with Coats that the question might
  be presumptious, the Rainbow Fishs response is
  anything but neutral. He cries out, Who do you
  think you are? Get away from me!
• Clearly Pfister intends for readers to see that
  the Rainbow Fish lacks manners. That said, I
  agree with Coats that the one of the messages in
  the text is about conformity but the other is
  about manners. It is possible to make the one
  argument, while conceding that the Rainbow Fish
  is not exactly polite or thoughtful of others.

16
Karen Coats Fish Stories

• Coats concludes her essay by discussing Lionnis
  Swimmy, a text she feels puts forward difference
  in a positive light, as Swimmys ability to work
  with his fellow fish and their ability to
  accept his difference saves the entire fish
  colony from destruction.

17
Karen Coats Fish Stories

• What does Coats say are the benefits of viewing
  childrens literature critically and taking it
  seriously?
• if we do not pay careful attention to the
  artifacts of child culture, we risk blithely
  passing on damaging, static traditions that
  inhibit social growth (409).
• Artifacts static what do those mean?