All the girls are wearing black, painting in black, and making fun of Pinkalicious for loving pink.
Pinkalicious feels left out until she learns that pink can be a powerful color, and that the most important thing is to be yourself.Pinkalicious stars in five more picture booksPinkalicious, Goldilicious, Silverlicious, Emeraldalicious, and Aqualiciousas well as I Can Reads, doodle books, and more.
It's great that the girl eventually stands up for her own love of pink, but throughout the book, the name-calling is never balanced by a voice explaining that name-calling is hurtful.
Background info: in NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children there is a chapter that cites a study about a decrease of violence in cartoons and an increase in 'social aggression' (i.e. the stuff you see on the movie Mean Girls). Problem is the study shows a correlation between an increase in social aggression in media and an increase of the "Mean Girl Syndrome" in elementary school kids. Because 95% of this book is "cool girls" teasing this girl about liking pink.
Our pink-loving heroine finds herself persecuted by the other girls at school in this follow-up to her initial adventure, chronicled in the eponymous Pinkalicious .
My kids like this book and I'll read it, but only with a lot of added discussion about the situations involved, making sure they know the words said by the pink-haters are unkind and unacceptable and that Pinkalicious shouldn't put so much stock in what they say.
And since Kann decided to introduce these particular conflicts in this story but failed to provide any helpful resolution or guidance for her readers as to how to face these types of problems, I would STRONGLY discourage any other parents of preschool/kindergarten children to try this book.
Personal Response- My little sister's favorite part of the book is when Pinkalicious paints the picture with her friend. Her least favorite part was when Pinkalicious got vanilla ice cream instead of a pink sundae. Plot- The book starts with Pinkalicious painting a pink picture in art class.
Pinkalicious, the heroine, is bullied at school for loving pink, while all the cool kids only like black. Pinkalicious goes home to mope, and to count her pink stuff. I somewhat hoped the book might try to have the bullies and Pinkalicious learn to expand to liking new things, but nope, having nothing in your life but pink is apparently a-okay. Well, juvenile logic is not unforgivable in a kid's book, but a plot where the heroine is a whiny little brat and nothing is done by her or her family to address bullying is reprehensible.
It is a really cute story about her friends making her feel bad for liking the color pink. But at the end, she realizes she can like what she wants and not give in to peer pressure and that the color pink can create something beautiful.
Personal Response: I read this book to a little girl that I babysit for and she absolutely loved it. Characterization: Pinkalicious started out as an outgoing and smart little girl.
I picked up this book because my daughter has liked some of the Pinkalicious series (we have 2: Easter and Goldilicious' tea party), and they are kind of whimsical and silly even if the message isn't awesome. As other reviewers have said, sometimes "mean girls" in a book are a good thing because they introduce ways/means to talk about unpleasant or unacceptable behavior. Pinkalicious has the "blues" because the girls at school now like black and are a bit nasty about it.
Victoria coauthored and illustrated the first two books, Pinkalicious and Purplicious.
