Waterstones – stop pushing dangerous gender ideology at children!

Waterstones, the UK’s leading High Street book retailer, has shortlisted a book entitled ‘My trans teen misadventure’ by Lewis Hancock, a transgender-identified female, for its prestigious Children’s Book Prize, due to be awarded on 30 March.

The book is supposedly aimed at 14-year-olds, yet has an ‘adult content warning’ sticker on the back and the illustrations are clearly designed to appeal to a much younger audience.

Books appearing on this shortlist can expect to significantly boost their sales and popularity as Waterstone will ensure that they are foregrounded in stores, meaning that they will be given a prominent position on displays aimed at children and parents, to entice them into a purchase.

My trans teen misadventure plays upon the natural anxieties of pre-pubescent and adolescent girls about their appearance and encourages them to despise their developing bodies and perfectly natural body hair. An image labels breasts as ‘fatty lumps that should be gone’, describes ‘hips from hell’ and even points towards an ‘imaginary willy.’

The book also features cartoons of a child being injected with puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones, misleading impressionable young readers as to their harmful side effects, while another transgender-identified girl with a beard dismisses the experience of de-transitioners and says that gender transition is the best thing she ever did.

This cartoon adventure is not literature that will inspire and enrich young minds. It is political propaganda aimed at indoctrinating children and encouraging vulnerable girls to hate their bodies.

Waterstones is the leading bookseller on the High Street whose mission statement is to give customers ‘expert advice’ from a team ‘passionate about bookselling’.

As supposed literary experts, Waterstones should realise that this book does not contain any kind of balanced discussion about the pros and cons of ‘gender transitioning’ for children and instead contains a one-sided approach, that arguably falls foul of strict regulations governing medical advertising to children.

My trans teen misadventure does not reflect the fact that puberty blockers are being banned across the world and are no longer routinely prescribed for children under 16, due to increasing concerns about their safety.

Waterstones should know better than to promote harmful medical practices to children in a book of cartoons that has absolutely zero literary value.