The Rainbow Fish
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The Rainbow Fish description
If you read this very popular book just before bed, and the light is still on in the hallway, you can make the rainbow scales glitter on the page, and realize why the Rainbow Fish was so proud of his beautiful decoration. Sometimes, though, being too proud of outside beauty can blind a fish, or a child (or even, heaven forbid, a parent) to the beauty people hold inside. That's the lesson of this simple tale, imported from Switzerland. It's a useful one for future sneaker and designer clothing shoppers, for rainbow fish--and for quieter, plainer minnows, too. |
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The Rainbow Fish Customer Reviews
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Terrible, Terrible Lessons for Children
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Rainbow Fish in concept doesn't actually start out badly right off...it could have been a nice little "morality play" about vanity and pride and how to be considerate of others while celebrating what makes you glitter, literally or figuratively. But that's not where Marcus Pfister chooses to go with it at all. True, at the beginning the little fish is not a very nice or sympathetic character, and does nothing to mitigate the envy of other fish towards his glittery scales. But the lesson he is taught by the octopus is just wrong in so, so many ways! I don't know what is more of a problem for me. Is it...
1) The idea that having something unique and special about you in and of itself makes you deserving of scorn and hatred (as opposed to how you choose to act because of or in spite of that uniqueness).
2) That you should "buy" yourself friends
3) That the only way to make friends if you are unique or different is to shed what is unique to fit in and stop inviting envy
4) That you should give into whatever peers and friends want from you and demand of you, just to get them to like you
5) That you should be ashamed or apologetic about your natural talents and inner or outer beauty
To those who say that it's just about "sharing" and those of us who don't like the book are reading too much into it, I respond that there are some children who process learning very deeply from books... I know because my 5 year old is one of them. I rely greatly on books (good ones..not like this one) when she is facing a crisis like friend trouble, a developmental block like potty learning, a struggle like a death in the family, a fear like her first haircut. I ask for recommendations and read books until I find one that is supportive, but subtle so that she can draw from it what she needs. I shutter to think what messages about peer pressure and self-deprication she would draw from this. She is VERY much perceptive enough, as has been for many years, to draw these negative messages from this book, and I would never want that to color her relationships with other kids or adults.
There are incredibly good books out there about sharing.. one of my favorites is "How Kind" by Mary Murphy.
Please, please don't read Rainbow Fish to your kids or anyone else's.
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The Rainbow Fish Books In Print, Audio Books.