In a move to promote “diversity” among young children, the city of Hanover has allocated around €11,000 from surplus budget funds to distribute “queer book boxes” to its municipal daycare centres.
This initiative, spearheaded by the city’s commissioner for sexual and gender diversity, Maximilian Horn, alongside a queer employees’ working group, aims to make “queer life realities” visible from an early age. It does so by highlighting diverse family constellations, body types, disabilities and gender expressions beyond traditional norms.
Family constellations other than the “so-called traditional father-mother-child family” are also to be portrayed.
The project involves more than 40 city-run Kitas (child-care facilities), with each receiving a box valued at approximately €270.
Each box contains 14 selected children’s books. According to city officials, the books convey a core message of diversity and the value of being human.
Among those included are several titles that address gender identity and same-sex relationships tailored to young children.
Today, German news outlet Apollo News reported on the content of those works.
One book, Teddy Tilly, is about a teddy named Thomas, who would rather be a girl than a boy and wants to be called “Tilly”.
“This picture book is about much more than the topic of transgender. It is a magical picture book story that is about the courage to be different,” the publisher’s description reads.
“For compassion, acceptance, tolerance and above all unconditional love. A book that makes children strong.”
Another book, Julian is a Mermaid, aimed at four-year-olds, explains how Julian loves mermaids and likes to extravagantly dress up and goes to a lesbian wedding.
In the book A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, published in 2018, a male rabbit wants to marry another male rabbit but their leader, a stink beetle resembling former US vice-president Mike Pence, opposes it. They elect a new leader and are married by a lesbian cat.
Critics, including the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, have branded the initiative a “scandal” and an example of “woke” indoctrination, arguing that pre-schoolers should not be exposed to such topics.
Lower Saxony state parliament AfD MP Vanessa Behrendt, the party’s family policy spokesperson, has vowed to examine every recommended book and demand a government response, claiming the project overwhelms young children and oversteps into parental territory.
“Of course, it is important to convey to older children and adolescents that there are different life plans, and that it is perfectly fine for men to be attracted to men, or women to women. Of course!” she said.
“Here, however, something else happens: Children are confronted with content that overwhelms and unsettles them in a crucial phase of life.
“All this over the heads of the parents. No child of pre-school age needs ‘queer book boxes’ and the city’s daycare centres in particular have completely different challenges to overcome!” Behrendt stated.
She said the handling of these issues “must in principle remain the responsibility of the parents”.
“Abusive municipal employees with a ‘woke’ agenda have to stay out of the minds of our children. We will subject each of the recommended titles to a detailed examination and then demand a statement from the state government,” she added.
The controversy has drawn widespread attention on social media and in conservative outlets, with some commentators decrying it as a waste of taxpayers’ money and an attempt to normalise “abnormal” lifestyles.
City officials maintain the books promote self-acceptance, equality and appreciation of differences, without sexualising content, and reflect real-life diversity such as children with same-sex parents.
Supporters, including Kita leaders Yildiz Kilinc and consultant Angela Munke, argue it counters exclusion and builds on training programmes for staff on LGBTQI issues. Hanover Mayor Belit Onay, of The Greens, has backed the effort as part of inclusive policies.
Since 2018, all daycare centre managers and since 2020 all daycare centre teams have been gradually trained on the topics of LGBTIQ, needs, attitudes and pedagogical handling of gender and sexual diversity in crèches, daycare centres and after-school care centres, Hanover city officials told news outlet NOZ.
As a result, the topic has been “firmly anchored in the municipal daycare centers for years”.
