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Review: The Rainbow Fish

A review of the well-loved children’s classic The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. This allegedly heart-warming story promotes forced sharing and false sense of happiness.

This book follows the story of a beautiful rainbow fish who is one day shunned by the other fish folk for refusing to give a fish one of his scales. He goes to speak to the “wise” octopus who tells him that he has to give away his scales, making himself as common as the rest of the fish, only then will he be included in society again. Rainbow Fish reluctantly goes with that plan and allegedly finds happiness despite giving away all but one scale.

As a child I was skeptical of this books morals and now as a parent I still am. This book teaches all the wrong reasons to share and tells the child that social validation is the most important thing; either that or this book is some sort of metaphor for socialism.

Verdict
★★ ☆☆☆— Nostalgia can’t disguise the terrible moral of this story.