The Rainbow Fish is a children's book drawn and written by Marcus Pfister, Swiss author and illustrator, and translated into English by J. Alison James. The book is best known for its morals about the value of being an individual and for the distinctive shiny foil scales of Rainbow Fish. Decode Entertainment turned the story into an animated television series of the same name, which had aired on the HBO Family television channel in the United States from 1999 until the early 2000s.