[ars]

I have a book called "The Rainbow Fish", which I refuse to let my kids read.

I think it has a horrible message, that individuality is bad, and you must give away all that is special about you in order to conform.

I never bothered to look it up till today, and I see that wikipedia has an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Fish about it, with almost exactly the same criticism I made.

Why do adults write such books (including the ones you mentioned) for kids? And why do other adults allow them to become popular (AKA buy them)?

[tptacek]

Dude, The Rainbow Fish is just a book about sharing. You know, like stickers and crayons and stuff.

I'm pretty sure we can take any children's book and, with some rhetorical gymnastics, reconstruct Harrison Bergeron from them.

[ars]

I can see how you can read it that way. But the fish has to give away parts of it's own body! And not just that, but give away the very thing that makes it special.

And it's not like sharing one crayon when you have a box of them, no, here it has to give away every single one of it's scales until every fish has exactly the same amount.

To put it in human terms, it's like if a girl in class has long pretty hair, and all the other girls are jealous, so they make her cut off pieces of it to give to all the other girls.

Or in less dramatic terms, if I have a box of crayons, I don't just share one with the kid next to me, I go around the class and hand one out to each and every kid, until every kid has exactly the same number of crayons.

I also don't like the message from the friends, who insist on receiving the item. Sharing is about giving, it is NOT about demanding that the other person share with you. (Or snubbing them until they give you want you want.)

[tptacek]

The friends don't insist on receiving the scales. The friends are annoyed when the Rainbow Fish uses them as a reason he's better than they are. Which is exactly what little kids do when they get some awesome toy or a neat set of markers: show them off, and refuse to share.

[ars]

Then the message should be about not showing off, rather than give it all away.