I bought The Rainbow Fish without reading it first because a friend recommended it, and because I knew my daughter would like the sparkling illustrations. But after reading it, I'm not sure I like the lesson it teaches.

The title character is the most beautiful fish in the sea with his colorful, glittering scales. But when a little blue fish asks for one of his scales, he refuses. Eventually he realizes he has no friends, and goes to a wise octopus for advice. The octopus tells him to give his beautiful scales to the other fish. He is horrified at the thought, since he would no longer be beautiful, but he changes his mind and gives away all but one of his special scales. At the end of the story he is happily playing with his friends, each of whom is sporting one of his beautiful scales.

I know this is supposed to be a story about sharing, but I don't like the way this lesson is taught. It bothers me that the other fish would not befriend the rainbow fish unless he gave them something precious. It seemed to me that he was buying their friendship. I don't want my daughter to think that if you have something other kids don't have (beauty, talent, Twinkies, toys, whatever), you have to give it to them in order to make friends.

My version is the board book, and it may therefore be a shortened version of the original. If so, perhaps something was lost in the editing. But I would not recommend the board book version, or the full version if it teaches the same lesson about buying friendship.

Recommended: No