"Julian is a mermaid" reception aged child

[Quantumduckling]

Hi, I wonder if I could get some views on this. My child has just started reception and came home with a book "Julian is a mermaid". I'm concerned that the teacher may be pushing a transgender narrative to the children if this is the book that they are given on day 1 of reception. Would you be concerned?

I'm absolutely fine with boys being told they can dress up and play with whatever they like, the same for girls. This just feels off to me so soon after starting. Would you be concerned? After the supreme court ruling are schools allowed to teach children that they can change sex if they feel like it (they can't- and I wouldn't want my 4 year old child to be taught anything like that).

Or would you just take it as a fun book for the first day of reception and no deeper meaning?

Reading and discussing together that gender stereotypes are bad or that boys can become girls if they want to?

This ⬆️

OP, if this were me I would ask the teacher to clarify what will be discussed in the lesson and whether the discussion will make it clear that being a boy and being a girl relate to biology rather than feelings. I would also ask why the school chose this book for the class instead of something like My Body is Me, which also challenges sex-based stereotypes but makes it abundantly clear that biological facts about our bodies are still important.

I would also ask why the school chose this book for the class instead of something like My Body is Me, which also challenges sex-based stereotypes but makes it abundantly clear that biological facts about our bodies are still important.

Actually, on reflection I would hold this thought (because parents aren't in charge of choosing school texts) and just focus on asking the question about how any class discussion relating to Julian is a Mermaid would be carefully handled to ensure that it didn't promote the belief that a) we all have a gender identity and b) that it's possible for someone to have a gender identity that is misaligned with their sex.

Schools and their teachers need to follow the Nolan Principles on objectivity and, under Teaching Standards, they aren't allowed to promote personal or political beliefs. By holding a class discussion about the book, the teacher is right on the edge of the line between fact (biology) and belief (gender identity).

It seems odd that any teacher or school would choose to put themselves in that position unless they were ignorant of the statutory school guidance calling out the safeguarding risks relating to gender questioning children (paras 204-208 in this year's KCSIE guidance, which all schools must follow by law) or specifically wanted to bring their belief into the classroom.

Lots of materials from outside sources push the ‘boys can be girls’ agenda in schools. It’s not ‘transphobic’ to point this out and be wary of it. Some texts are purposefully being used to introduce the belief that you can ‘be anything you want to be’… including the sex you want to be.
I think it’s a beautiful book and I have used it in school - but didn’t talk about the identity bollox as per the lesson plan.

Of all the books in all the world.....

Why not "Where's Spot" you know about the cute little dog doing lots of things ungendered.

I'd be very wary TBH.

Bring back Hairy McLairy.

God we love Hairy McLairy!

I saw this book in our local library the other day alongside a vast number of incredibly stupid looking books - Pronouns, how to affirm someone’s identity for kids 5+ looked a treat 🙄 - and gave it a swerve. I’d be very unimpressed if school was trying to push it onto the kids.

The library staff nearly all wear rainbow lanyards while the school staff don’t seem to have been infected by gender chicanery.

They do use Jogsaw but the only stuff we’ve heard about from there is about bodies and I read it carefully and it looked fine. Maybe they’ve shaped up, maybe worse is to come.

I unrolled it for you.
https://twitter-thread.com/t/1283509068196458496

It’s concerning that you say you’re a teacher but can’t see the issues with this book. It’s introducing the idea with images that the boy actually becomes a female mermaid at the end.

He’s taken to see drag queens (we have very many threads highlighting the total unsuitability of drag queens for children) by his grandma and is depicted in his underwear.

There is no reading merit for children in this book, it is an indoctrination tool endorsed by RuPaul. Why on earth would RuPaul be involving himself with a children’s book?

Exactly. I found a pile of my kids books in the loft the other day. Gorgeous, sweet books - like Do Your Ears Hang Low, Winnie the Witch, Sanjay and the baker, A Squash and a Squeeze and Lost and Found - one of their absolute favourites.

We bought Lost and Found for a little girl we know recently and she loved it. Bring back kids books that aren’t pushing the trans agenda.

I think there may have been more than one version? I feel sure when I looked it up when my dd did it at school I saw him steal his grandmothers clothes in the book. But watching it be read in YouTube again you are correct it’s the curtains. the one I just watched used the name nana but it was abuela in the original I saw.

I just googled the original and can’t find it. But when I google the original artwork this photo comes up and that’s not in the version I just watched. It’s been watered down I think. I’m too tired to keep looking now but I feel like I didn’t misremember and there is a version out there where it’s his grandmothers clothes he takes not the curtain

https://jesslove.format.com/julian-is-a-mermaid

can’t work out how to do the photo. If you scroll down on here you see Julián in red platform heels. Not a curtain. Don’t think I saw this image in the version I just saw on YouTube. I’m very tired maybe I missed it

Yes, it's the wholly unnecessary cross-sex thing that makes no sense.

Would you tell a boy who liked drama that he could maybe become an actress when he's older? Would you tell a girl who liked the idea of stopping people doing bad things that she could become a policeman?

Why would anybody deliberately use an opposite sex descriptor when a correct one for the child's own sex already exists?

In fact, the word mermaid is a lot better known than merman - and thus people tend to consider merpeople as feminine by default - so why would they miss the obvious open-goal opportunity to tell children that boys can pretend to be this fun fantasy creature just as much as girls can; indeed there's actually an equivalent word, which they may not have heard before, specifically for males who want to play at being this character?

Shocked by many of these responses. 😳 ……I know the book as we have a copy. Two questions, A) do you want your child to truly be themself? Because if you really do, why wouldn’t you want them to learn that if a boy wants to dress in a stereotypical female way, then that’s fine! (If you don’t think that’s ok, can you explain why please? As I don’t get it….)

B) Do you honestly think that someone who had not already had very strong feelings they had been born the wrong sex might be persuaded to actually change sex, as far as is possible, (which is of course a big deal) by a picture book? Enlighten me please.

This book is not at all about a “transgender narrative” (what does that even mean); it’s about a boy that dresses up as a mermaid for fun. Absolutely NOTHING inappropriate about the book.

Did you miss that this is a question about the teachers choice and has nothing to do with the acts by chlidren in the teachers care?

Is the teacher pushing a personal agenda of like pink/barbie = girlie like brown/GIJoe = boyie

One the Stonewall Award schools was busy teaching the children that lesbians will take drugs and become men when they grow up so its rather important that the OP understand (if/) why that teacher picked that book.

This.

Some of these responses to a book about a boy who likes dressing up are unhinged.

Maybe somebody should tell that to the author - as she very much seems to believe that it is.

There's even a reference to a pearl necklace in the book, which I very much hope is as innocent as it sounds; but when there's a clear agenda of pushing boundaries and slipping inappropriate things through, it does make you wonder.

Like with that Grandad's Camper book, where he has a random book in the trunk with his fetish gear labelled 'MAP' - which might just be an atlas that he happens to store with the other stuff...

That's the author/illustrator's web page, and there are several drawings there that don't appear in the book. Perhaps she's sharing some early drafts - she does say drag was an influence.

I find the story nice and harmless, and kids won't pick up on the subtext. The illustrations are wonderful, but I do get an odd vibe from some. For example, at the start of the book there's Julian as a boy in the pool, swimming under water, frog-like, while his gran and other ladies rest by the side (my favourite illustration in fact). At the end they're all mermaids, and Julian is now reclining passively with his arms covering his chest, and with a rather coy expression. I think I'd feel the same way even if it were 'Julia is a Mermaid', about a girl.

At any rate, as others have noted, the important thing's to be clued up on what your kids are being taught overall.

I agree with all of this.

For me - my GC feminism is precisely that boys and girls can dress up in sparkly clothes or pretend to be a mermaid or like football or diggers or playing firefighters or whatever else, and that this doesn't make them the opposite sex. The book is consistent with that worldview. Julian isn't "transed" at any point, he's explicitly a boy at the start and the narrator never says he becomes a girl/mermaid, there's no shift in pronouns. He's dressing up and playing. The illustrations in which he's actually depicted as a mermaid have a dreamlike quality.

If there's an 'agenda' the teacher might have to go with this book, I'd guess it's "toys/games/dressing up are for everyone", which is a reminder some 4-5yos definitely need - it's an age where lots of children will test the "pink is for girls" type rules, and I'm happy to see that proactively challenged in schools.

I know the author's gender politics don't quite match mine, but I don't actually think it matters here because the book itself isn't actually spelling out a trans narrative at all. And, indeed, "banned in some parts of the US" isn't exactly proof the book is wrong...

If there's an 'agenda' the teacher might have to go with this book, I'd guess it's "toys/games/dressing up are for everyone", which is a reminder some 4-5yos definitely need - it's an age where lots of children will test the "pink is for girls" type rules, and I'm happy to see that proactively challenged in schools.

notsurewherenotsurewhy You can not say this if you do not know the teacher.

The OP needs to establish that this ^ is what the teacher is aiming to do rather than supporting the authors ideology.

Yes it is a LGBTQ boom BUT it’s literally about a boy who likes mermaids and their look who dresses up as one using what he can around nans house and then off they go to a carnival. Think it’s a nice story tbh!

JaniceBattersby · 05/09/2025 23:43

My kids read all kinds of books. Many of them pure shite and many of them excellent. One book is not going to indoctrinate your child, and neither is one teacher.

Tell me, have you any lived experience as a human being?

Nana indulges him with clothes and takes him to a drag parade, which consists of men in skimpy women's clothes and stripper heels. It ends with him as a fully female mermaid child.

Pass the sick bucket.