Purplicious is a children's book about bullying and how it makes you feel - and it's just about the worst approach to this serious topic that I could imagine.
Pinkalicious, the heroine, is bullied at school for loving pink, while all the cool kids only like black. I don't expect much subtlety in a kid's book, but this is a pretty heavy-handed variation of the straw-man argument. The mean kids at school are ridiculously mean, without reason beyond that being what the story needs - for there to be bad people to make Pinkalicious feel bad.
Pinkalicious goes home to mope, and to count her pink stuff. And does she ever have pink stuff. Everything she owns and wears is bright pink. That's not a preference, that's an obsession. 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.
As time passes Pinkalicious mopes and sulks more. She insults more, and withdraws from things she used to like. And the moral we think is coming, of Pinkalicious figuring out, or her family explaining to her that it's important to like what we like and not listen to bullies NEVER COMES. But we do get a hilarious example of first-world problems when Pinkalicious refrains from getting her beloved pink ice cream, instead getting a vanilla ice cream that's impossible to eat because it's so bland...
Ultimately Pinkalicious does nothing but be unpleasant. Someone else solves her quandary by reaffirming to her that pink is great, which comes out not only unrewarding but also just baffling. Another student shows her that "Pink is powerful!", because mixing pink with blue will make purple...... but, don't you mix red with blue to make purple? And, can't you mix any number of colors together to make other colors - how is pink any more powerful than other colors?
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. Cutesy-ness is all this book has going for it, and that was not enough for me.