Twaddle or Not? Purplicious

In an earlier post, I wrote about why I think Pinkalicious and the Perfect Present does not deserve to be labeled twaddle. Victoria Kann's Purplicious is another story.

In this book, the main character Pinkalicious gets teased by the other girls at school for liking the color pink. They call her painting "ugly," and say they're not going to be friends with her. They laugh at her and even make fun of her brother. At home, Pinkalicious is sad. She sulks for a week and dresses in blue. Her parents take her to get ice cream to cheer her up, but she makes fun of her brother, and wastes her ice cream, complaining that it's bland. At home, she screams at her parents "You don't know anything!" and runs to her room. She sits and sulks some more. The resolution finally comes Monday during art class, when Pinkalicious sees a girl painting a blue cake. The girl says she likes pink, and mixes pink with blue to make purple, and they become friends.

Reasons to reshelve this book...

• The majority of the characters have undesirable behaviors.
• There is an underlying message that it's okay to behave in certain ways when one is upset (sulking, complaining, being wasteful, making fun of people, being ungrateful, pitying oneself).
• There is an underlying message that it's okay/normal to yell at one's parents.