The Rainbow Fish is much beloved of preschool and junior primary school teachers, because it teaches values, and in particular, the value of sharing, of caring for people (fish!) because of who they are, not what they look like, and the value of modesty (c/f vanity, not c/f licentiousness).
The plot, for those of you who haven’t read the book (and I advise you not to, in any case). The rainbow fish is very beautiful, with lots of lovely, shimmery scales, but he doesn’t have any friends, because he thinks he’s too beautiful to play with the other, plain, fish. (Cue lots of lovely, shimmery illustrations.) But he’s sad and lonely, so he takes himself off to the wise old octopus, who tells him to give away his shining scales. “You won’t be as beautiful,” she says, “but you will have friends.” So back he goes, and gives away his shining scales, so each fish has one. He’s no longer beautiful, but now the other fish like him. (Illustration of lots of fish, each with one shining scale.)
Isn’t that lovely? Isn’t sharing nice? Isn’t it good to not care so much about the way you look, but to care about who you are?
I think I have seen copies of the book, and children’s art celebrating it, in every classroom my children have ever been in, until the last two or three years for Miss Ten. But there’s a version up on the wall in the Miss Sevens’ classroom, retold and illlustrated by the children. They have been taught those values every year.
Well, yes, sharing is nice, and yes, it is good to focus on who people are rather than what they look like. But…
I read that last “value” as a paean to conformity. You had better look like every one else. Don’t you dare stand out and be in the least flamboyant. Don’t celebrate any special talents and abilities you have – make sure you fit in, Fit In, FIT IN. It’s not a lesson in sharing and caring – it’s a lesson in conformity. I read it this way because the Rainbow Fish must change who he is in order to be accepted by the community. What kind of a message is that to give to small children?
I suggest that if anyone gives you a copy of The Rainbow Fish for your small children, hide it in the back of the cupboard, and only bring it out when they come to visit (we still have one or two wedding presents that we treat like that, nineteen years down the track). Get your kids an Olivia book instead.
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PS: While I’m on the subject of literature, you should go and read the comment my brother left on the own-up-to-your-party-piece thread.
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Yes, thank you Deborah, always thought the same, the Rainbow Fish isn’t much of a step up from the Ugly Duckling (who wasn’t ugly after all! phew!)
I look at the much more complex politics of The Sneetches as the antidote for this sort of rubbish – there aren’t too many other children books that deal with diversity, in looks or otherwise, that I’ve found especially impressive.
AAArrrggghhh! I hadn’t met this horrible idea before. Yuck! Up with the Sneetches, I say! Stars upon thars!
That’s really scary. A story that belongs in the New Illustrated Grimm’s Fairy tales for sure.
But honestly, a disturbing number of children’s books fall into this category. I’ve started calling them “immorals”… stories that promote bad ideas. We’ve been shopping for books for extended family on and off for a while now and it’s really easy to work through the whole collection in many bookshops without finding something decent, so we usually settle for vacuous and well illustrated.
But honestly, a disturbing number of children’s books fall into this category. I’ve started calling them “immorals”
Yeah, I should really print a T-shirt that reads “You don’t want to get me started on Thomas the Tank Engine”.
I agree, Deborah. I’ve never liked The Rainbow Fish much, and positively loathed Thomas the Tank Engine. And Noddy. And the Little Yellow Digger series, more on grounds of utter tedium than bad messages.
I love the Moomintroll books for being odd and fey and complex and funny. But they’re for slightly older readers than the above.
Yes! I loathe The Rainbow Fish for this very reason.
More advanced in age than the Rainbow Fish, I suspect, but once kids are 10 or 11, the Weetzie Bat series is an awesome, anarchic celebration of the joys of being weird.
Closer to home, Margaret Mahy is also pretty good at celebrating the weird and diverse.
That reminds me of the double meaning I recently found in the picture book Badly Drawn Dog – Badly Drawn Dog decides it’s time for a makeover, and gets himself ‘redrawn’ – before deciding at the end of the book it’s better to look the way your friends want you to look, and be loved, rather than look the way you want to look, and be alone. (It is a very clever and witty book, though, and there’s much more to it than my summation, so it’s still worth buying. )
Jane & the Dragon is great for the girls can do anything and follow your dream messages.
Stephen Michael King writes and illustrates beautiful books for preschoolers about interesting characters that are quirky. They also have a bit of a sense of melancholy from not quite fitting in, though they usually have a happy ending. There’s also a book, Charley Parsley, and (can’t remember other character’s name!) who are opposites in everyway, but the very best of friends and they complement each other. The nice thing about that book also is that it’s the girl character who is active and messy, while the boy character is quiet and sensitive. It can be hard to find children’s books that don’t reinforce gender stereotypes (or cultural stereotypes, or heteronormativity…..)
I just read a favourite “The Man who’s Mother was a Pirate” to the girls tonight. Here is a story about throwing convention to the wind – give up your day job and run away to sea
Ugh, the rainbow fish. Earnest and boring. I recommend the Happy Hocky Family. It was the first book daughter read on her own: true story. Great graphic art and acerbically funny.
Hmmh’s suggestion is called Pearl Barley & Charley Parsley, and it is quietly lovely. As opposed to the bleepin’ bleepin’ Tank Engine, new installments of which we regularly cart home from the library and then try to hide for a week til I can take them back. You missed the only problem I remember from the Rainbow Fish (I last read it when I was doing work experience at the local library fifteen years ago) which is that it encourages craft projects with lots and lots of little pieces of foil.
I’ll read anything if you can guarantee it’ll put my kid to sleep, does anyone have any suggestions?
How old would this child be? (Then I’ll subtract twenty minutes because my children are all precocious by about that much.)
My kid is two and a half. He has many fabulous qualities, including the capacity to sit quietly fascinated by Roald Dahl, but sleep isn’t one of his skills.
Pippi Longstocking is my favourite “it’s ok to give convention the finger” books. I borrowed it from the library a few weeks ago to re-read. I didn’t share it with the kid, I kept it gleefully to myself. I’m now re-reading Wind in the Willows.
I’m reading Livy – The Early History of Rome – at present. In translation! About two pages is guaranteed to put me to sleep.
I despise Rainbow Fish – sadly though, I’m a librarian and almost every other youth services librarian loves the damn book and sets up storytimes and activities about it. I hate the ‘sacrifice parts of yourself to fit in’ because the arrogance is never really addressed, just that he’s different and shouldn’t be proud of that.
I’ve never discussed Rainbow Fish with anyone (it just didn’t come up) but as I started realising how ubiquitous it is, I thought I must have missed something when I skimmed through it in the bookshop and tossed it aside as horrid. Glad to see I’m not alone.
Richard Scarry books are disturbingly bad, which irritates me immensely because I adored them as a child.
And yes, I love Olivia. I particularly love the pained expressions on her family’s faces.
innercitygarden – I have this stats text book which never fails to put me to sleep.
innercitygarden, if you love Pippi Longstocking, you might also know the Noisy Village books by Astrid Lindgren? Very low-key and entertaining, more “realist” than Pippi’s wacked-out adventures, and just incredibly Swedish and cool. Kids doing kid things and being taken seriously. We love them.
I couldn’t agree more about The Rainbow Fish (is there a local version called The Very Tall Poppy?). Not just dubious morals, but bad science! The Rainbow Fish could simply have pointed out to her friends that they could all sparkle too, if they would just swim in the sun. A two year old could have plotted it more sensibly.
A nice antidote to The Rainbow Fish Who Was Taken Down a Peg (hmm, it’s not by the Rev. Awdry, is it?) might be Leo Lionni’s Swimmy, which is also about a small fish who is different, but cunningly leverages that as part of a bold collective scheme to outwit the big fishes. The fishes, united, will never be defeated. Aux armes, poissons!
PS innercitygarden, you might just have the kind of child for whom literature is not and never will be a soporific. My two have never fallen asleep while listening to a book, or even while reading it themselves. (Come to think of it, I only fall asleep over books because I am a million years old and thoroughly exhausted by boy-wrangling. I used to stay up all night and read to the end.) If anything, reading seems to ramp them up. The big boy was reading chapters from Oliver Sacks’ Uncle Tungsten last night and it totally “blew his mind up” as he says – he then spent about an hour making blueprints for a laboratory he’s going to build in his wardrobe…
So, yeah, maybe books can signal impending sleepiness, but music and darkness are what actually seal the deal?
That said, I’ve sometimes found Dr Seuss books a useful narcotic, if read in a really really bored voice (think Karyn Hay), just because they’re so damn long. But it feels a bit wrong to use them that way, like deploying Benadryl on an airplane for non-medicinal reasons, y’know?
I tend to read Thomas the Bleeping Tank Engine in a soporific tone. He tells me to talk louder.
Sadly, music and darkness don’t seem to do the trick either. Especially now that he can get out of bed and turn the light on. Eventually he gives in and passes out, it just tends to be rather later than I’d like.
Ariane, the words in Richard Scarry books were never the point, the illustrations are still grouse. And my non-sleeping kid will spend an hour or so pouring over them quietly all by himself, for which I will be forever grateful to Mr Scarry.
Yep, that’s where we wound up in the end – the quiet reading-to-oneself. It satisfied most of the various needs of the household, except perhaps the need to occasionally wake up on time the next morning…
And, this might not work for our non-sleepers, but children’s book author and illustrator John Burningham has come up with a rather dinky idea:
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It seems to me that the Octopus rather missed the point of the problem, which appears to have been that, “…he doesn’t have any friends, because he thinks he’s too beautiful to play with the other, plain, fish.”
Octopus ought to have just said, “Get over yourself already, and just go and join in and stop being such a stuck-up arsehole!”
Problem solved. Moral of that version: “being different doesn’t make you better than anyone else.”
Oh, thank goodness. Yeah, I find that one pretty creepy because of that. Rather than just being friendly and respectful instead of vain and arrogant, you’re supposed to give away parts of yourself? And when you point out that the messages in some ‘classic’/beloved children’s stuff are kind of screwed up, you’ll just about always get the same “you’re reading too much into it”/”you’re looking for silly things to get upset about”/”but it’s a classic!”. Whoo.
My reading was more like SnowdropExplodes. Octopus is an idiot. If the Rainbow Fish is too stuck-up to have friends, the solution shouldn’t be to buy some.