As my daughter and I sorted and decluttered books in her room this week, she found her copy of The Rainbow Fish. To my surprise, she informed me that this beloved children’s book is now controversial.

Welcome to the 125^th edition of The Sunday Spark, a series with weekly thoughts and highlights, nuggets of learning, and a simple living challenge for the week. Along with The Rainbow Fish controversy, this week’s edition looks at IKEA’s progress on eliminating plastic packaging, my word of the week, how Texas is repurposing used EV batteries, and air drying laundry.

On my mind this week: Why is The Rainbow Fish so controversial?

This week, my daughter Colleen and I were sorting through and decluttering books in her room when she found her copy of the children’s book The Rainbow Fish. She said, “I have to keep this one because I love the story but it’s really controversial these days.”

I remember us loving that book and couldn’t imagine why it would be controversial, so this piqued my curiosity. I had to learn what could be offensive about this seemingly innocent children’s story.

The Rainbow Fish story

If you’re not familiar with The Rainbow Fish, it’s about a fish covered in beautiful, glittery scales. He’s proud of his colourful scales to the point of arrogance. When one of the other fish asks him to share one of his scales, he refuses. The other fish tells his friends and they decide to shun rainbow fish.

Feeling sad and lonely, rainbow fish seeks advice from a wise octopus who suggests he could share his colourful scales with the other fish. The next time the other fish asks for a scale, rainbow fish shares one with him. Then, all the other fish want one too. By the end of the story, every fish—including rainbow fish—has one shiny scale and everyone is happy.

Lessons from a beloved children’s book

I read this book with my girls many times when they were small, but I took some time to reread it this week. Here’s what I take away from this story:

• Appearance and possessions don’t define you so don’t let them go to your head. Beauty and riches don’t make you better than everyone else.
• If people don’t like you because of undesirable character flaws like arrogance, you may need to change your approach. It’s not about changing who you are, but rather about recognizing your shortcomings and being willing to compromise.
• Sharing and giving feels good. Everyone is happier when riches are shared rather than hoarded.

Then I read some of the negative reviews and comments about the book.

Those who dislike it say the book is about bullying, manipulation, and being forced to change yourself to suit others. They also suggest it sends negative messages around boundaries and consent because the other fish should simply have taken no for an answer. Even worse, the book has also been accused of communist themes because rainbow fish shares his wealth with others.

Teachable moments vs. cancel culture

As is the trend in the 2020s, those who are offended by the book are calling for it to be cancelled or banned. Which brings up the bigger issue of cancel culture and banning content we deem controversial simply because we don’t agree with it.

As parents, we can raise our kids in a bubble and avoid anything that isn’t squeaky clean and kind, but how does that help them navigate life? Quite honestly, it would be easy to find something offensive about pretty much every children’s story. Let’s face it, the Disney Princesses are hardly the kind of role models we want for our daughters, and some of those old fairy tales are downright sinister.

Instead of calling for a ban, we could simply choose to not buy the book or read it to our kids. But wouldn’t it be better to instead use the book as a teachable moment? The suggested age range for the book is 4 to 8. That’s a great age to have conversations about bullying, sharing, boundaries, and acceptance of self and others.

Interestingly, when I read reviews of The Rainbow Fish, I learned Robert Munsch’s Love You Forever—another of our favourites—is equally controversial.

In the end, Colleen packed her copy of The Rainbow Fish away with other treasured books she wants to keep. Clearly reading it didn’t do her any lasting damage.

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Three highlights of the week

It’s important to celebrate big milestones and simple pleasures in life. Keeping the trend going, here are three highlights and simple pleasures of the week gone by:

• Last weekend, we went to a birthday party for our niece’s 2-year-old twins and 4-year-old daughter. It was fun and chaotic.
• One evening earlier this week, we counted 12 bunnies along our usual evening walking route.
• On Thursday evening, we had dinner at LA Franks in Cambridge with my husband’s family. LA Franks is a local seasonal takeout hut that serves burgers, hot dogs, chicken, fresh cut fries, and ice cream. It was yummy.

Things I learned this week

Life is all about learning. Here are three things I learned this week:

IKEA switching to paper

IKEA recently announced they’re phasing out those little plastic bags they use to package their hardware. In a move that’s estimated to save 1,400 tons of plastic a year, they’ll replace the plastic bags with paper packaging. And they’ll produce the paper packaging in house using waste from their production processes.

This is part of IKEA’s bigger initiative to phase out all plastic packaging by 2028.

(Source: ESG News)

Word of the week – Imbue

Friday’s Wordle word was “imbue”. It’s a word I’ve seen before but I wasn’t sure what it means, so I looked it up on dictionary.com. It means to instil or inspire with ideas and principles. I hope my blog imbues you.

Texas boosts power grid using old EV batteries

One of the arguments against electric vehicle (EV) adoption is the waste generated by batteries at their end of life. But Bexar County in Texas is repurposing 500 electric vehicle batteries at the end of their automotive lives to stabilize the state’s electric grid. The batteries will charge when there’s an abundance of power in the grid, and return the power during periods of high demand.

(Source: Grist)

This week’s simple living challenge – Air dry clothing

Simplifying life is a big part of living more intentionally. With that in mind, I kicked off the year with 52 ways to simplify your life this year, including a downloadable checklist of weekly tasks.

This week’s challenge is to save energy and prolong the life of your clothes by air drying your laundry. If you don’t have a clothesline, you can air dry on a small foldable drying rack. Visit this post for more energy and money saving laundry tips.

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I’d love to hear what you think about any of this week’s topics. Drop me a comment below and let me know your thoughts and ideas.