The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister
I am told that it is a popular and well-known
book, although I haven’t read it before.
The first thing that stands out is the
beautiful metallic silver scales on the illustration of the fish. The fish is
on every page and so the reader can always see these as the narrative continues.
These scales are his treasure. He loves being
beautiful by showing them off and they attract other fish.
When another fish wants one, he rebukes him
and the small fish goes off to tell his friends what happened. This in turn
leaves Rainbow Fish with no friends because of his attitude.
When Rainbow Fish discovers that he is all
alone, he goes to the Octopus for advice and the octopus tells him to give all
of his scales away. He would find happiness then.
The Rainbow
Fish felt that he couldn’t do that because he loved his scales too much. But he
did give a small one away and discovered that it did bring him happiness. He
gave most of his silver scales away and kept one for himself.
Pfister uses
such adjectives as ‘Beautiful, sparkling, wonderful, amazed, shiny, glittering,
shimmery, glimmering’ to capture the readers emotions and children love these
descriptions of sea life.
It seems
that there may be more than one moral or virtue to this story, but the one that
is the most obvious to me is this: sharing your riches to others will in turn
make you internally rich (happy). I think that this principle can be taught to
most primary school children and this book could be the basis of many lessons
in art, design and technology, English, Biology and SOSE.
A link to the telling of this story with sound
effects. (I think they could have read it more slowly and with more
expression). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52WHpsJCrwM
Alex
No comments:
Post a Comment