Wouldn't this also be a fairly straightforward Christian allegory of entering the kingdom of God by selling all your possessions and giving them to the poor?
If you take your body to be a posession, sure. But not if you take your body to be your body.
Sounds like Rainbow Fish and the Giving Tree should get together and form a support group.
And if you take kingdom of God to be "popularity". But not if you take popularity to be popularity. Then it's just slutting it up to make friends.
Giving away your body is an even more straightfoward Christian allegory.
Maybe the rainbow fish is really a person, and the blue fish are really fish, and the scales are really dead skin, and it's all an allegory for the benefits of that weird-ass beauty treatment where fish eat your dead skin.
For the socialist interpretation, what's missing is government coercion. That it still provokes outrage gives more evidence, if any was needed, that that objection is just a fig leaf for selfishness.
If we're complaining about messages in children's books, I'd like to point out that the clear message of The Gruffalo is that safety comes from convincing everybody that you're a ravenously hungry murderer. This is so obviously correct that I don't think we need any new children's books.
Let's go on for several hundred comments over whether the body is a possession or not, and more importantly, whether or not thinking so makes one a libertarian, and if it does, is that necessarily such a bad thing?
I recommend to everyone the one-star reviews of "I Want My Hat Back" on Amazon. SHARIA! Murder is good!
The message of The Sneetches, as I realised, is that the way to achieve prosperity is to find a small tropical island whose population is obsessed with owning meaningless markers of relative social status, and start selling said markers for an increasingly high price (while making sure to overhaul your product range every season to keep them coming back to buy more).
coughNarniacough.
I got into an argument with Tedra (shocking, I know) about this, because I saw the book at a beautiful message about the importance of sharing, and Ted saw it as a metaphor for how women are expected to sacrifice their very bodies to please others.
It is interesting that this latter reading pops into women's minds right away, and men don't think about it at all.
That's because men don't have scales.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
Ok, so Tedra and Heebie might be right about Rainbow Fish, but in general I'm not happy with the degree to which people, reacting against the norm that women should be self sacrificing, wind up praising selfishness.
One example of this that really bugged me of those image files that actually contains nothing but words which floats around on facebook. It was meant to be a retelling of a princess story where the princess decides she doesn't need a prince and goes on to have a successful and independent life. In describing the glories of the successful life, this image file that actually contains nothing but words said "She always put herself first."
I just can't get behind that, if you always put yourself first, you are a dick.
in general I'm not happy with the degree to which people, reacting against the norm that women should be self sacrificing, wind up praising selfishness.
Shouldn't we instead be trying to spread a norm that everyone should be self sacrificing? A Boy Scout always thinks of others before himself, etc. If you always put yourself first, you are a sociopath.
I just can't get behind that, if you always put yourself first, you are a dick.
This sentence is cracking me up with the visual images.
I thought the story was going to go that the rainbow fish was actually reflecting the colors of all the fish that surrounded him, and when they left he would be dull. Not that my version would have a very good moral either: All of your friends have their own colors, but YOU need them to be ANYTHING!
Aside from that, I agree with 15 and I think I know the meme you're referencing, and it is obnoxious.
I'm all for "you don't need a man to save you" but it gets distorted into "you're entitled not to think of other people".
18: You're friends are only interested in you because of their narcissism! Flo!
People will only like you if you're less attractive than they are!
21: That explains why people move away from me when I'm really drunk. It's because I get better looking when I drink.
6: at least it's not a weird ass-beauty treatment where the fish eat your skin, I suppose.
This thread reminds me that one of my "book" ideas (and one that I believe has been done, maybe?) was a series of childrens stories/fables in which greed and selfishness triumph. "And the Rainbow Fish lived out her days content in her knowledge that she truly was the most splendid of all the fishes."
It's because I get better looking when I drink.
EVERYONE gets better looking when I drink.
Rainbow fish is so hott when I drink.
24 sounds like Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes, including the retold Snow White in which Snow White steals the Magic Mirror and settles down with the Dwarfs to make money on the ponies.
"And ever after, day by day,
The Mirror made the bookies pay.
Which shows that Gambling's not a sin
Provided that you always win."
Speaking of drinking, Fresh Salt sometime this week?
I'm worried that I haven't heard of Rainbow Fish. I thought I was on the scene, but I guess not.
Anyhow, if there's one audience unlikely to take home the message that you need to give your entire self away to please others, it's 2-5 year olds. Those guys are pretty into putting themselves first.
I do sometimes wonder why we care so much about the moral "message" of kids' books (and to be clear I totally censor the books I think have weird messages). I don't read literature for moral allegories or feel particularly morally instructed by it, why should it be different for kids?
Rainbow Fish rubbed me the wrong way as well, even if you think of the scales as possessions rather than body parts. I'm all for unselfishness as measured by your own judgment of what other people need from you. When the definition of unselfishness is "Give anyone who asks anything of yours they ask for regardless of need or prior relationship", that seems unfortunately selfabnegating.
I do sometimes wonder why we care so much about the moral "message" of kids' books
I don't care about the presence of a moral, but if it's there, I want it to be something non-irritating.
The books I hate the most are the "I'll love you forever" style books. Our mother in law has given us a few books that I eventually just hid because I hate reading them so much. They're stupid and sappy AND I start to cry. I hate them. Generally the child grows up and has a child of their own and sometimes the parent-turned-grandparent dies.
In the end, all the other fish were slaughtered by a school of pelicans targeting their shiny new scales.
Rainbow Fish rubbed me the wrong way as well
I liked Rainbow Fish, but I'm Team Commie so go figure. Also, while I happily play along for the sake of the joke, I've never found The Giving Tree unpleasant either.
31: (and to be clear I totally censor the books I think have weird messages).
Little Red Henpromotes the idea that eating bread is desirabl!
Even for Team Commie, I'd think that the Giving Tree comes closer to the way the horses were treated in Animal Farm than to "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his need."
but I'm Team Commie so go figure.
In communist Russia, pretty girls have to give it up anytime someone wants a piece?
I don't care about the message of Rainbow Fish, but I hate it because the story is really boring and the artwork is bad.
That too.
Here's the message of Rainbow Fish to small children: IRIDESCENT FOIL!!!
In a good version, the other animals don't ask to eat the bread, and instead wait for it to be transformed via the magic of biology into chicken meat.
because the story is really boring
Sure, but that goes for ~99% of pre-K literature.
pretty girls have to give it up
In Rainbow Fish, the scales are more analogous to clothing/possessions than to body parts.
Pretty girls should give away their clothing?
42: The artwork is so, so, so bad and tacky.
43: Exactly.
I liked Rainbow Fish
This is a careless overstatement. I'm indifferent to Rainbow Fish (as I am generally to kids' books that didn't figure into my own childhood), but didn't mind reading it when the kids asked for it. Mostly because it was short.
We unfortunately have a book I inherited and forgot to throw away in which various licensed Disney characters each learn the true meaning of Christmas through incredibly inane stories. Of course, it's become a favorite. Were you wondering how the Aristocats and the cast of Oliver and Company learned that presents are not as important in the holiday season as hanging decorations and spending time with those closest to you? Would you be interested in reading about this in May? Now you can.
46: Probably, but I think there's enough non-boring options to justify refusing to read the boring ones.
I only just now clicked the Wikipedia link. They turned that book into a *26-episode* TV show? Wow.
Sandra Boyton has a book of Christmas poems where one of the poems scans perfectly to the Mexican hat dance song. I really liked that one.
I shall make you rainbow fishers of men.
I shall make you rainbow fishers of men.
various licensed Disney characters each learn the true meaning of Christmas through incredibly inane stories
...
Would you be interested in reading about this in May? Now you can.
Let the punishment fit the crime.
Getting mad about a story like this just goes to show that the Christianity of the right has nothing to do with the words and deeds of Jesus as recorded in the bible and everything to do with petty tribalism. Jesus would give you his damn scales and then magic up some more to give scales to the multitude. Or something.
I shall make you rainbow fishermen.
Jesus would give you his damn scales
Jesus was scaleless, like the catfish that carry his mark. He also had prominent barbels.
Actually I bet Jesus would say to the other fish to stop being such pricks and either be friends with Rainbow Fish for who he is, scales and all, or leave him the fuck alone. Being purchasable friends is a sign of bad character and the other fish should be ashamed. The octopus gave bad advice. That's the moral of the story. Don't take advice from an octopus.
Jesus was scaleless, like the catfish that carry his mark.
Doesn't that mean that Jesus wasn't kosher?
It's raining fishers of men!
At her daycare "graduation", C's class performed The Pout-Pout Fish.
I'm a pout-pout fish
With a pout-pout face,
So I spread the dreary-wearies
All over the place.
Blub
Bluuuub
Bluuuuuuuuuuub.
57: the story of the Rainbow Loaf is even more touching.
Better to remove the gender element and cut straight to the spirit of Christian sacrifice by inflicting Wilde's "The Happy Prince" on the little tykes instead.
Hoooooboy. I was really into "The Selfish Giant" as a little kid, and yeah. All great children's stories end with "Today you shall be with me in paradise."
65: Right. And that one, at least the recipients actually need the gold leaf and rubies.
Rainbow Loaf, wait for me! Please give me one of your shiny sesame seeds. They are so wonderful and you have so many.
Ponarke Nanama in: Rainbow Loaf meets the Anal Flans
Jesus would give you his damn scales and then magic up some more to give scales to the multitude. Or something.
This reminds me of the time I started shouting at the television during The X-Files episode about the "magic words" that our L.&S. spoke to raise Lazarus. I may have thrown something.
Lazarus, come out ?
Flip was probably one the crazy people who wrote me letters when the publishing company I worked for put the story of Joseph and his dreams in a reading basal. We made it look like MAGIC rather than the divine work of OUR LORD.
(And this, children, is why Bible stories aren't in reading basals. You get the the crazy from both ends. How DARE you teach my children about a SKY FAIRY. But hey that stuff about the giant turtle was awesome sauce.)
I also get super-angry at television psychics who claim to have the power to speak to the dead.
I own two copies of "Rainbow Fish", but I've never read it -- the kids never asked for it. I think they were gifts. My kids tend to obsess over the same few books over and over, so we have piles of unread books.
The story is actually a disguised message promoting Rainbow Parties.
The author is clearly trying to corrupt the youth.
75: Well, sure. Ghost hunting shows, too. That just makes sense.
Disgraced NFL kickers try to exercise their demons, literally, as they work with a team of expert supernatural investigators to find, and kick, a ghost. Tonight! On Ghost Punters.
Which animal was the wisest?
82: Shit, I meant to bring that in upthread.
For 44: Why did the other animals eat the chicken?
A: They were annoyed.
B: It was the WOD.
C: It was bigger than their heads.
D: Is it called bestiality when it is between two non-human species?
E. Auntie Em, Uncle Henry, Toto! It's a twister! It's a twister!
The Pout-Pout Fish song in 63 is so fantastic. I need to turn that into a mantra I say to myself in the mirror when I start spreading dreary-wearies. Heehee.
So Dreary-weary, Henny-penny, Cockylocky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey, Turkey-lurkey, and Foxy-woxy all went to tell the king the sky was falling.
Gotta give the creators of the TV adaptation props for the character names Principal Gefilte and Mrs. Chips. And the internet tells me that Principal Gefilte was voiced by the improbably-named French Tickner, who, if the universe is just, must have had a porn career at some point.
JAMCRUISE KIDS 2012 PRESENTS:
RAINBOW
PHISH
GOOD CHARLOTTE
BELLE AND SEBASTIAN
HORTON HEARS THE WHO (FEAT. REV. HORTON HEAT +ROGER DALTREY)
Not having read the book, I'm mostly with 30, and generally try not to read too much into books aimed at the pre-K set. I suspect the takeaway is probably "sharing is good!" and "PRETTY FISHIE!"
Evidently, The Little Red Hen has an afterlife as an anti-welfare-state parable.
When the blue fish asked Rainbow Fish for a scale, the proper response would have been, "No! Looter!"
...Then the other fish discovered to their horrified disappointment that a single scale is not actually that beautiful. The beauty of Rainbow Fish's multicolored appearance came from the accumulation of scales. Once the scales were redistributed in egalitarian fashion to the lesser fish, they lost their power to create something wonderful. His incentives dulled, Rainbow Fish stopped creating jobs, and the whole school of fish descended into a spiral of dependency, deficits, and the erosion of the traditional family. The End.
The kiddo likes the Rainbow Fish okay, but PPF much better. After today, they're both out of my house, and replaced with this thread. I suspect she'll thank me for it later.
Please record story-time tonight when you sit down with this thread, for our collective pleasure.
PPF?
Production Possibility Frontier?
Parents' Political Feelings?
Pippa the Prostitute Fairy?
Mara has been requesting a pop-up book called The Twelve Bugs of Christmas. No moral there, at least! The creepiest/saddest book we have is MAMA, about Owen the baby hippo losing his mother and eventually finding Mzee the tortoise to take on that mom role, but it's been hugely powerful for Mara, Alex, and Val. I wonder whether kids who aren't missing their moms/families would be terrified by it, though.
This is probably where I should say that we agreed to take another foster placement, but with a lot of caveats and very different ground rules from last time. Lee has made tons of progress in counseling and I feel ready and I think Mara could use a playmate. This is a 6-year-old girl and her foster home is closing. I'm guessing she'll be with us within 10 days or so, but it's not an emergency placement. She almost certainly knows Mara's 6-year-old sister and cousin, so that should be an interesting dynamic. It is very unclear what her permanency plan will be and we're not committing to adopt her at this point, just to do what we can and see how things go.
Back to the topic at hand, I always think about a book for older kids that's a fictionalized version of the Rosenberg story where the two little kids are used to being told that "The little hen worked and thus was fed / and that's why everyone called her Red" or something like that at the ending, but it took having their parents be arrested and someone else in their new home reading the book to them for them to learn this was something their parents had inserted rather than something from the text. The next digression is that the great thing about the internet is that if you want to find out who took in the Rosenberg kids, you don't have to just ask around a lot like I did when I was a freshman in high school before I found a book that told me.
29: JM and I could do Wednesday, say 7:30-9.
By some stroke of luck I had never heard of this book until this thread.
99: By some stroke of bad luck I didn't die before hearing about this book. I'm still enraged at the messages "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" sends to kids.
Jessie J is pretty darn great, and I keep pressing play on "Call Me Maybe" even though I know I shouldn't....
Oopsie. That was in the wrong thread.
Go the F*** to Sleep is thinly-veiled pro-welfare-dependency propaganda.
(TFA)
29 I might be able to make Wednesday or Thursday say 5:30 or 6ish on.
I'm still enraged at the messages "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" sends to kids.
I assume you mean where it tells them they can become dentists if they want to.
My selfish child self loved A Little Princess for all of it's wonderful depictions of stuff. And, to boot, the version I had was so gorgeously illustrated.
This thread reminds me that one of my "book" ideas (and one that I believe has been done, maybe?) was a series of childrens stories/fables in which greed and selfishness triumph
This describes most fables pre-1800.
do sometimes wonder why we care so much about the moral "message" of kids' books (and to be clear I totally censor the books I think have weird messages). I don't read literature for moral allegories or feel particularly morally instructed by it, why should it be different for kids?
Because most literature for kids has an explicit, nay painfully didactic, moral message. If it's a shitty message, we should care.
I'm vaguely remembering a lemonade stand children's story that received some attention in the last year or so: it laid out a scenario in which kids running a lemonade stand found that their ability to spread the wealth, so to speak, was hampered by all this socialist do-goody talk, so that everything just fell to pieces.
Something along the lines of Knecht's 92.
I dunno what the moral is for the rainbow fish, but there seems to be pretty straightforward advice for the ordinary fish: if you see someone who's different from everyone else, harass and ostracize them until they give you stuff!
This describes most fables pre-1800.
Not true in Czech. Cooperation between wanderers to overcome problems is a common theme. Selfishness in stories is directed towards supernatural beings and landowners. There were two major transcriptions from oral traditions collated in the 1820s and 1840s.
Actually, not particularly true in the Thousand Nights and a Night either.
The problem with the Rainbow Fish story, if there is one, appears to be that the rainbow fish is *born* with its rainbow scales. In the real-life fish world, indeed it is, but of course in the real life fish world, the other fish don't give a shit.
In this story, the other fish do give a shit, because the rainbow fish probably doesn't deserve its rainbow scales, and, most importantly, rainbow scaliness is a zero sum game . Oops.
Do you have the book where the girl cooks fancy meals for the penguin who does all the fishing? In my over-reading moods I assume they're married (or else the penguin is Jesus, I guess), and even though the girl doesn't get to fish and does all the cooking, every day they "take turns winning."
Rainbow Fish doesn't sound as disturbing as the slew of picture books about white animals who learn how color and brightly colored animals can be fun even though it isn't for them. Some of those are pretty good, actually, but I don't think there are as many about rainbow colored animals unless they're chameleons.
I really hate the penguin book, though.
I think togolosh is right in 60, and in 57. I don't like the Rainbow Fish story very much. Its premise is confused.
Or, rather .. the more I consider it, the more upset I become.
Can fish even see in color? This story is racist.
The octopus gave bad advice. That's the moral of the story. Don't take advice from an octopus.
Ryan North is way ahead of you on that one.
1 & cetera: I think I liked this book better when it was called The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
119: But that treasure he grabbed. He wasn't born with it. Also, mice with swords are great.
121: Okay, fine, I liked it better when it was called Give Me My Tailypo.
122: Some children's book version of that story scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. My mom was babysitting a girl a few years younger than me who somehow thought the story was hilarious and wanted to be read it over and over again, and it terrified me.
123: And that little girl's name was Ann Coulter. And now you know The Rest Of The Story.
Do you have the book where the girl cooks fancy meals for the penguin who does all the fishing? In my over-reading moods I assume they're married (or else the penguin is Jesus, I guess)
Wait, what?
125: It's called the Bible, my friend. Look it up.
I was about to ask for advice on courting a woman when thoroughly depressed and self-loathing, but then, upon previewing the comment, I thought better of it. However! -- oh, drat, can't remember the however-bit.
PS.: the kale experiment was a qualified success.
... by which I mean, I ate the whole bag of kale, in two sittings, after having cooked it with olive oil as per the Mineshaft instructions. It went well with the other breakfasty-things: sausage, avocado, egg, &c.
I ate the whole bag of kale
What makes it qualified?
127: In my experience, shutting up rather than disagreeing with her when she found good qualities in me helped. As long as the depression isn't keeping you from being interested in her, it's worth a try. That's how I was when Lee and I got together and having someone genuinely enjoy my company helped shift my thinking faster than expected.
Thorn, best wishes for the newly-placed child you mentioned above.
125:
"My penguin fills my pail with fresh fish.
I thank him by fixing our fanciest dish."
133 is so creepy.
132: She's not with us yet, but should be within a week or two. We meet her tomorrow and I expect the transition to be awkward and hard, but she sounds like a great kid. And thanks! (Sincere Moby Hick is not my very favorite Moby Hick, but I very much appreciate the support.)
I put a link to a duck penis on the other thread.
Duck penis links are among the rarest of sausages.
Mara has been requesting a pop-up book called The Twelve Bugs of Christmas. No moral there, at least!
We have this! Snowboard Bug, catching some freshies. Then Hokey Pokey spent an adrenaline-filled ten minutes utterly destroying the living fuck out of that thing. Bye-bye, complicated Snowman Bug.
Also, is this new foster child the same one that spent the night with you guys a month or two ago?
Actually ours is not Christmas-themed, just winter-themed. Probably the same series, though.
137: It's a different child. We weren't sure we could commit to adoption and Lee didn't feel like she clicked with her. Now that I think about it, there are going to be some pluses to having a child closer in age to Mara, like that I can put them in the same gymnastics and swimming classes at the Y.
I think the series is called "bug in a box" or something like that but yes, must be the same thing. Back when he was with us, Alex pulled half the twelve angel bugs off and I haven't taped them back in yet, which is why the book was out and caught Mara's eye.
135: Moby was on fire in that thread. I kept having to tell Lee I couldn't explain to her why I couldn't stop laughing.
126: hey, I went to Sunday school, and at no point was Jesus described as being a penguin. Is this some Revised Standard Version weirdness?
ajay,
This is a penguin who lives in Antarctica while his girlfriend lives in Hawaii or Polynesia, so anything's possible: "wherever friends meet is the perfect spot," and in subsequent scenes he's been translated there with her. Either men are from the Arctic and women are from the Tropics, or something supernatural is going on here.