Grandad’s Camper received the following accolades, according to Harry Woodgate’s website:
- Winner of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize Best Illustrated Book 2022
- Winner of the British Book Awards Children’s Illustrated Book of the Year 2023
- Shortlisted for the Polari Children’s & YA Prize 2022
- ALA Stonewall Book Awards Honour Book 2022
- Nominated for the CILIP Kate Greenaway Award 2022
Woodgate is from the UK. The book has also been published in the USA, France, the Netherlands, and Germany. A Welsh version, called Antur Taid a Fi, is also available.
On the back cover of the UK English version, the synopsis is as follows: “Years ago, Grandad and Gramps travelled the world together in their camper van. But Gramps isn’t around any more and Grandad no longer wants to go on adventures…” Also on the back cover, we see the camper van painted in the pink, blue, and white colours of the Trans flag, with a Progress flag on its roof.
What happens in the book? The granddaughter, upon hearing about Grandad and Gramps’ camper van adventures and seeing the camper van, gets excited and suggests to Grandad, “Let’s fix it up and go to the seaside. Together!” Gramps later says, “Your Gramps would be so happy to see this. It’s what he would have wanted. I think we should pack some snacks and hot chocolate and we can go and camp on the beach – just like we used to!” The book ends abruptly with them on the beach.
Although all interpretations of literature may be speculative, the story seems to suggest a few potential areas for concern. In particular, is the grandchild replacing Gramps in a parentified role, making up for the loss of Gramps? Is it exemplifying parentification, defined as what happens “when a child is forced to take on the role of a supportive adult within their family”? Or is it even more sinister, suggesting the possibility that the grandchild is taking on the role of an (intimate) ‘partner’ for the lonely Grandad?
Although the plot sounds less than inspiring, even removing the worries about child safeguarding as represented in the story, there was apparently a market for a sequel. Grandad’s Pride received the following awards:
- Shortlisted for the 2024 Diverse Book Awards
- Shortlisted for the 2024 Indie Book Awards
- 2024 Lambda Literary ‘Lammy’ Awards Finalist
- Shortlisted for the 2024 Little Rebels Award
- Book Award for Best Children’s Literature on Aging, Gerontological Society of America
The back cover synopsis reads:
Grandad and Gramps once went to many Pride parades, but now Grandad says his partying days are over. Milly isn’t convinced. If Grandad won’t travel to Pride, then Pride will have come to him! Together they organise a fantastic day of celebrations. But just as the parade starts, Grandad is missing. Perhaps he’s not coming after all?
Spoiler alert: the reason nobody can find Grandad is because, as Milly discovers by surprise, “Grandad is leading the parade!”
On the penultimate page of the text, Grandad says to Milly, “You and Gramps are so similar. He was always coming up with clever ideas. Just like you. You would have so loved each other.” Again, is Milly so similar to Gramps that she is now replacing the role he had in Grandad’s life?
As one might deduce by viewing the front cover above, Grandad’s Pride is awash with coded illustrations; even the dog has a Pride bandana! But let’s start with some of the modern-day Pride festival slogans that appear on signs throughout the book:
- LOVE IS LOVE IS LOVE
- Be PROUD of who you ARE!
- NO H8
- LOVE WINS
- LOVE IS A HUMAN RIGHT
- It’s OK to say GAY
- All we need is LOVE x
- TRANS RIGHTS NOW
- Trans is beautiful
- HAPPY PRIDE
- PROTECT TRANS KIDS
- BREAK THE CIS-TEM
- QUEER, DISABLED, FABULOUS
- LGB WITH THE T
- Read with PRIDE!
- EVERYONE DESERVES A HAPPY EVER AFTER
- Trans kids are magic
- STAY FABULOUS
Grandad reminisces about earlier days when he and Gramps went to Pride parades. Parade signs in the illustrations accompanying his reminiscence include:
- Lesbian & Gay Pride ‘85
- LESBIANS & GAYS SUPPORT THE MINERS
- BLACK LESBIANS
- I’M A LESBIAN AND I AM BEAUTIFUL
- LIBERATION NOW
- GAY AND PROUD
- WE ARE EVERYWHERE
- ACTION = LIFE
- A.I.D.S.: WE NEED RESEARCH NOT HYSTERIA!
- REPEAL PARAGRAPH 175
- SAME-SEX MARRIAGE FINALLY LEGAL! It’s about time
- Pay It No Mind
- GAY LESBIAN BI TRANS PANSEXUAL ACE HUMAN
- BE YOUR SELF
- SOME PEOPLE ARE GAY GET OVER IT
In addition to the signs, which will not carry obvious meaning for preschool-age children, the visual illustrations are alarming. The Daily Mail reported in 2023 that an earlier version of Grandad’s Pride showed “two men in leather fetish gear” kissing. (The 2024 UK paperback version, which I own, does not have this illustration).
According to the BBC, Genesis Pre-School in Hull, East Yorkshire, removed the book in 2023 after a parent removed his child from the school and the “school’s chair of trustees agreed the book was not age appropriate”. The book’s publisher, Andersen Press, stated that “Grandad’s Pride faithfully depicts Pride parades from the past and present, many of which are attended by children. We consider accusations of ‘hidden messages’ to be baseless, deeply offensive and homophobic”.
On an objective level, the ‘hidden messages’ are not at all hidden. In addition to the text on the parade signs, the book is rife with semantically-rich visual representation.
The book contains numerous flags, in addition to the repeated use of the Pride Flag and the Progress Pride Flag. I noticed these in my copy of the book:
- Bisexual Pride: blue, pink, and purple
- Trans Pride: blue, pink, and white
- Non-binary Pride: yellow, white, purple, and black
- Intersex Pride: purple, yellow, and blue
- Lesbian Pride: purple, white, and orange
For examples of more Pride flags, see the page ‘LGBTQ+ Pride Flags and What They Stand For’ on the Volvo Group’s website.
Other visual imagery in Grandad’s Pride must not be missed in an in-depth analysis of its content. For example, there is an illustration of who we are led to believe is a trans man with ‘top surgery’ (mastectomy) scars in the parade. We can also see a bearded man wearing a dress.
When Milly and the dog “build a pirate fort in Grandad’s attic room and search for hidden treasure”, they find some noteworthy items.
One is a pink t-shirt with an inverted pink triangle, the symbol that the Nazis forced gay men to wear. It correlates with Paragraph 175, an 1871 addition to the German criminal code that made it illegal for gay men to have sexual relations. As I noted above, ‘REPEAL PARAGRAPH 175’ appeared on one of the signs in Woodgate’s visual depiction showing Grandad and Gramps’ Pride parades.
Another item in Grandad’s attic looks like an ‘All-Seeing Eye’, but it was not possible for me to determine what the meaning of it might be in the context of the book.
A final item is a map with the word ‘MAP’ written in large letters across the top. One concerned individual in England asked me whether I thought that could be a nod to the term Minor-Attracted Person; see Police Scotland’s statement regarding this term.
I hope this article has provided enough information about the misleading nature of ALA’s and CILIPS’ Banned Books Week to encourage concerned individuals to take action. Parents in America have so far been much more active than UK-based parents about ‘challenging’ library books and librarians about age-inappropriate content.
What can you do? Here are a few ideas.
- Find out where these books are shelved in the school and public libraries of children you care about. If you don’t have any close connections to children, you could simply investigate your local branch library. This could be done with a physical visit to the library, a browse of the library’s online catalogue, or a Freedom of Information request about what books containing sexual content are shelved in the children’s section.
- Write to your MSP and/or local councillor to let them know what books are available to children in local libraries; I can almost assure you that age-inappropriate books are going to be available in every Scottish library. I am working with a leading councillor in my own council who has requested a list of all the age-inappropriate books in the children’s sections of our council’s libraries so they can be investigated and moved elsewhere in the library. He believes that councillors anywhere do not know they are available to children so freely, and many may want to take similar action.
- Give children classic books that were written in the past, before gender ideology and the sexualisation of children took over the UK’s education systems.
- Seek out current authors who are writing non-ideological books, and buy their books. These are hard to find, sadly, because of the publishers’ expectations that I mentioned earlier in this article. They may be self-published, such as English author Tony Frais, who I met at the Wolsingham Show in County Durham, which I attended in September 2025 and covered in my role as UK Column’s correspondent for Scotland and the North of England. Tony’s book Noah’s Rocket, self-published in 2004 and described on the back cover as being appropriate for ‘ages 5-105’, is a light-hearted story that parents can read to their children without fear of ideological content. As I can attest after reading it myself, it is also enjoyable for adults. Tony was not aware of the ideological capture in children’s book publishing until I spoke with him at the show, and he was horrified to hear about it.
We must become more active in stopping sexualised content from appearing so freely in front of children. Images depicting topless people who have had ‘top surgery’, endless flags demonstrating ‘pride’ in any sexual preferences, or a child sitting in a camper where Gramps used to sit next to Grandad adds nothing to education. In fact, it detracts from it, and it has the definite power to confuse children before they are ready to explore sexuality — heterosexual, homosexual, or otherwise.
This is not about hate, bigotry, any supposed ‘phobia’, or a push for ‘inclusivity’. It is about child safeguarding, and it falls on all of us to make sure it takes place.
Note: A slightly edited version of this article was previously published on the Scottish Union for Education’s Substack under the title ‘Claims of Book Banning in the USA Turn Reality on Its Head’.