While I find If You Give a Mouse a Cookie’s ‘give them anything and they’ll take everything’ welfare policy to be a draconian and self-flattering excuse not to share, Rainbow Fish is clearly liberal to the point of self-destruction. Both very irresponsible, ethically biased children’s books. I think they should kill eachother

I remember this book. It was pretty cool as a kid

This is the true patricians choice

>>149192809
Actually, yes it is. Though it is subversive at its core, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs is an excellent primer in historical revisionism and mass media slander, as well as an early exercise in considering you have been greatly lied to

I have been reading my eight month old daughter Wuthering Heights. She cries when Mr. Lockwood is the focal character.

>>149193067
Is that even considered literature or isn’t it a type of romance pulp?

>>149192728 (OP)
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie is the perfect lesson though. So many of those people, if you give them an inch they'll take a mile.
Rainbow Fish on the other hand is pure propaganda and should be burnt.

I finished reading "The Brothers Lionheart" to my kids a few days ago. They really liked it, or they enjoyed me taking the time to read to them. Either way good times.

>>149193346
IYGAMAC’s message applies in many different situations, but it veers towards ‘don’t give anyone anything’.

>>149192728 (OP)
VERY early subtle tranny propaganda btw

>>149193426
Subtle? It’s clear Marxism, to the point where they disfigure the beautiful so as not to insult the plain

How about ‘give a mouse what you will, and deny them what you won’t’? Anyone ever thought of that?

Neither mouse nor fish can take what isn’t freely given

>>149193346
>Those people

>>149193067
My nephew finds H.G. Well's "The Island of Dr. Moreau" to be rather pedantic.

Richard Scarry reigns as master of civics and socialization in children’s books

>>149193585
Ronald Reagan spoke of them. Welfare queens.

Go on...

Pfister's Mil the mouse books were also quite leftist

>>149192791
If you don't know, the rainbow fish is a book about the titular character, who has bright, shiny scales and looks pretty and all the other fish hate RF because of this. RF is sad and lonely, so they pluck off their scales and give all the fish one and now they're all friends and everyone is equal and no one is more special than anyone else.
It's communist

He’s the original anti-racist baby. I can only imagine how many naive children destroyed their properties and status trying to honor his foolish message

>>149193067
That's so co-o-o-old

I only read my children Mein Kampf and tell them it's okay to kill other children if they're different

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie always felt like shit a Reaganite would write

I saw a take that Rainbow Fish resonates with people who were classified as “gifted children” but suffered massive burnout in young adulthood when the pressure to outperform all their peers caught up to them.

>>149197275
I would never give my kids 1 book. They’ll be way too ordinary,and people won’t be different enough from them to kill

>>149193067
I’m only a couple chapters in. I was warned that Heathcliff may come off as kind of an asshole sometimes, but he has nothing on Lockwood. Lockwood is a douchebag. I think I’m sympathizing with Heathcliff probably much sooner than I’m supposed to just because Lockwood is such a prick in comparison.

>>149192728 (OP)
Why are you trying to trigger my hidden memories

The real curse is teaching kids that they can even be ‘the rainbow fish’. All a part of the indigo child gifted kid neurosis experienced by prior generation’s incredulity and competitiveness with their own children.

“Oh, the Places You Will Go!” is kino

i remember the school library having this and being greatly annoyed that some nigger kid had opened it and tore some of the pages out.

>>149197533
Environmental storytelling

>>149197525
That was read at my highschool graduation and it was kinda hard not to cry.

Rainbow Fish was one of my childhood books that I liked......what's wrong with it?

>>149197468
>I was warned that Heathcliff may come off as kind of an asshole sometimes
Just imagine it's our Heathcliff.

>>149197617
Copypasta part 1/?

>Because Rainbow Fish can be retold like this:

>A fish has a part of their body - their physical, incarnate body, what they were born with - that makes them very happy and that they are very proud of. They also have an unfortunate habit of thinking that they are better than other fish. That part isn’t good, and causes the other fish to be unhappy with them and avoid them.
The fish is now very sad. The only person who likes the fish anymore tells him to go to the octopus, the animal framed as the adult in the story.

>The octopus tells the rainbow fish that they have been a snotty jerk and that the only way to make people like them again is to take off their scales and give them away. That in order to have any friends and make up for their behaviour, they have to rip off pieces of their own body and self and give them away to other people to make the other people happy and make up for their transgressions.
And the rainbow fish is upset. And then another fish comes and asks them for a scale. And the rainbow fish takes off a piece of themself, their body, the thing they were born into, and gives it away. And now that fish likes him, and is materially benefitted by this piece of another fish’s actual body that has been given to it.

>And then the other fish come, and the rainbow fish rips off more parts of its body - all of the parts that used to make it happy and that it was proud of - and gives them to the other fish, because it’s not fair that the rainbow fish’s body was so much nicer. And when the rainbow fish has ripped all but one scale off, tearing out of themself all but one of the things that they possessed in their self that made them happy, then all the fish are friends with them! And everything is great! And everyone has a fair share.
Of the rainbow fish’s, and I do quite mean to keep hammering this point, own body. (cont.)

>>149197795
2/?
>What the book says is:

>1. if you are born with something nice - like, for instance, an attractive body or a clever mind or a talent or whatever - and it makes you happy and proud, you are a horrible person and deserve to be shunned. Absolutely no line is ever drawn between Rainbow Fish’s self, their actual own body, and their behaviour. In reality, it’s their behaviour that’s the problem: they are mean and aloof to the other fish. This could be the case whether or not their body was all covered with magnificent scales. However, the book absolutely conflates the two: their behaviour is framed as a natural and unavoidable outcome of being happy about and proud of their special, beautiful body. So don’t you dare ever be happy or proud of anything you have or can do that everyone else doesn’t have exactly the same amount as, because if you do, you are horrible and by definition snotty, stuck up and mean.

>2. That in order to make up for the transgression of having something about your actual self that makes you happy and proud (which, remember, has automatically made you selfish and snobby, because that’s what happens), you must rip pieces of what makes you happy out of yourself and give them to other people for the asking, and you must never ever EVER have more of that part of - again, I hate to belabour except I don’t - your self than other people have, and that makes you a good person that people like and who deserves friends.

>To summarize, then: to be a good person you must never have something about yourself that makes you happy and proud and if you happen to be born with that something you must absolutely find a way to give it away to other people and remove it from yourself, right up to tearing off pieces of your body, in order to be a good person who deserves friends.

(cont.)

>>149197827
3/?


>This, I am absolutely sure, is not what the author intended: the author definitely meant it to be a story about sharing versus not sharing. But the author then used, as their allegory/metaphor, the fish’s own actual body. Their self. It was not about sharing shiny rocks that the rainbow fish had gathered up for himself. It wasn’t even about the fish teaching other fish how to do something, or where to find something.

>The metaphor/allegory used is the fish’s literal. body. And so the message is: other people have rights to you. Other people have the right to demand you, yourself, your body, pieces of you, in a way that makes absolutely sure that you have no more of anything about your body and self that is considered “good” than they do.

>And that might just suck a little bit except, hah, so: Gifted adult, here. Identified as a Gifted child.
This is what Gifted children are told, constantly. All the fucking time.
>(Okay, I overstate. I am sure - at least I fucking HOPE - that particularly by this time there are Gifted children coming to adulthood who did not run into this pathology over and over and over and over again. I haven’t met any of them, though, and I have met a lot of Gifted adults who were identified as Gifted as children.)

>>149197844
4/?
>Instead of being told what’s actually a problem with our behaviour (that we’re being mean, or controlling, or putting other people down), or - heavens forfend - the other children being told that us being better at something doesn’t actually mean moral superiority and is totally okay and not something we should be attacked for, we are told: they’re jealous of you. That’s the problem.

>Instead of being taught any way to be happy about our accomplishments and talents that does not also stop the talents and accomplishments of other children - whatever those are! - from being celebrated, we are left with two choices: to be pleased with what we can do, or what we are, or to never, ever make anyone feel bad by being able to do things they can’t. And the first option also comes with two options: either you really ARE superior to them because you have skills, abilities and talents they don’t (or are prettier), or you are a HORRIBLE stuck up monster for feeling that way.
(It is not uncommon for Gifted kids to chose either side, which means it’s not uncommon for them to choose “okay fine I really AM better than you”; this can often be summarized as “intent on sticking their noses in the air because everyone else is intent on rubbing them in the dirt”; on the other hand I have met a lot of Gifted women, particularly*, who cannot actually contemplate the idea of being Gifted because to do so is to immediately imply that they are somehow of more moral or human worth than someone else and this means they are HORRIBLE HORRIBLE SELFISH PEOPLE, and so will find literally any reason at all that their accomplishments are not accomplishments or that they don’t deserve anything for them.)
(cont.)

Do you think they're related?

>>149197883
5/?
>Instead of being given any kind of autonomy or ownership of ourselves, we are loaded down by other people’s expectations: we are told that because we can accomplish more we must, and that daring not to do what other people want to the extent that they want with what we are capable of we are selfish, slackers, lazy, whatever. We are taught that we owe other people - our parents, our friends, even The World - excellence, the very best we can possibly do, and trust me when I say people are ALWAYS insisting We Could Do Better. And we should, or else we will be disappointing them, or letting them down, because (because we are Gifted) the only reason we could possibly be failing is not trying hard enough.

>We are, in fact, told over and over and over and over again, to rip off pieces of ourselves to give to other people to make them happy, because those pieces are valuable, but forbidden from enjoying the value of those pieces - pieces of our selves - for our own sake because that would be selfish and arrogant. And we owe this, because we were born a particular way.

>Because, metaphorically, we were born with rainbow scales, so now we have to rip off those rainbow scales in the name of Sharing, and otherwise we are selfish and horrible and deserve to be alone.**

>That is why I fucking hate The Rainbow Fish.
(cont.)

>>149197910
6/6
>Because whatever the author INTENDED, the metaphor they chose, the allegory they picked, means that THAT is the story they actually told. (And is the story that child after child after child after child I have encountered actually takes from it.) I don’t hate the author; I’m not even mad at them. But I do hate the book with a fiery passion, and it is among the books I will literally rip apart rather than allow in my house when I have kids, because I’m not going to give it to anyone ELSE’s kid either.

>*but, I would like to note, not UNIQUELY: this is something I encounter in Gifted men as well.
>**I can’t remember who it was, in relation to this, put forward the thought: if people actually talked about the access and use of children’s bodies the way we talk about access to and use of Gifted children’s minds and talents†, the abusiveness would be absolutely clear? But they’re right.
>†because sometimes it is Gifted children’s bodies in an abstract way, in that its their talent for gymnastics or their talent for ballet or sport or whatever, so I mean in a very raw way, the actual physical embodied flesh we are.

(/end)

Sorry I fucked up the green texting

>>149197889
>colored fish
>giant red lips

>>149197795
It’s come to something when I can no longer tell if this is reddit massively overthinking something and making it problematic, or /pol/ turning everything into a convoluted conspiracy.

>>149197923
someone give tldr

>>149197941
They talk in circles a little bit and the hyperbole makes it seem like a bigger deal than it probably really is, but the take itself isn’t too bad. “Gifted kids have it rough because they are encouraged to self sacrifice, the Rainbow Fish book sums this up well because XYZ reasons.” is an okay opinion. I appreciate how they don’t even pretend like this isn’t all about the projection of their own personal experience, too.

>>149192728 (OP)
This is a children's book about shit

>>149198436
Isn’t that one german?

>“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “will you not stay with me one night longer?”

>“It is winter,” answered the Swallow, “and the chill snow will soon be here. In Egypt the sun is warm on the green palm-trees, and the crocodiles lie in the mud and look lazily about them. My companions are building a nest in the Temple of Baalbec, and the pink and white doves are watching them, and cooing to each other. Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget you, and next spring I will bring you back two beautiful jewels in place of those you have given away. The ruby shall be redder than a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as the great sea.”

>“In the square below,” said the Happy Prince, “there stands a little match-girl. She has let her matches fall in the gutter, and they are all spoiled. Her father will beat her if she does not bring home some money, and she is crying. She has no shoes or stockings, and her little head is bare. Pluck out my other eye, and give it to her, and her father will not beat her.”

>“I will stay with you one night longer,” said the Swallow, “but I cannot pluck out your eye. You would be quite blind then.”

>“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “do as I command you.”

>So he plucked out the Prince’s other eye, and darted down with it. He swooped past the match-girl, and slipped the jewel into the palm of her hand. “What a lovely bit of glass,” cried the little girl; and she ran home, laughing.

>Then the Swallow came back to the Prince. “You are blind now,” he said, “so I will stay with you always.”

>“No, little Swallow,” said the poor Prince, “you must go away to Egypt.”

>“I will stay with you always,” said the Swallow, and he slept at the Prince’s feet.

>>149193405
Not "anyone", "mice". You know, VERMIN.

>>149198789
The important difference between the Happy Prince and the Rainbow Fish is that the prince is sacrificing his jewels to fill real tangible needs that the suffering people in his city are lacking in. They are starving or freezing or in pain, and the Happy Prince saves them from death. Whereas, the other fish in the Rainbow Fish just kinda want the shiny scales so they can feel a little better about themselves, for entirely superficial reasons.

Also The Happy Prince is meant to be kind of a tragedy when he regrets dragging the Swallow down with him in his endeavor to help his people, which inadvertently kills the Swallow, breaking the Prince’s heart because he loses his beloved friend and then that tragedy only gets a silver lining because the Prince is rewarded by literally being chosen by God to ascend to Heaven with the Sparrow. Whereas, the Rainbow Fish has a strictly happy ending where the Fish’s satisfaction is supposed to be the reward in itself, and he has no amount of regret for anything.

So it’s a good comparison, but of course Oscar Wilde btfo the Rainbow Fish on every conceivable level.

>>149192728 (OP)
>DUDE, MUTILATE YOURSELF SO EVERYONE’S EQUAL

>>149192728 (OP)
I gotta give it credit: using that shiny patterned reflective foil type material that didnt just stick out visually, but also had a neat texture, was a solid choice. It’s not as good as Pat the Bunny where that’s the whole gimmick, but it’s a good touch that certainly makes a kids’ book stand out from the rest.

>>149197651
Now I would like to see one of you artfags draw WH’s Heathcliff wearing the Ham Helmet.

>>149192728 (OP)
I think rainbow fish would beat cookie mouse in a fight.