Children’s books are marked by speciesism. Drawings of fish tanks or caged canaries in children’s rooms as another decorative element; a dog tied to a wooden house outdoors, in a garden, to “protect” the house; Inside, in the kitchen, a milk container with a drawing of a smiling cow in a meadow; families fishing, armed with butterfly nets, catching crabs with saltwater nets on the rocks of a beach or taking a horseback ride.
To fight against this tendency to romanticize and naturalize the exploitation of animals, present in a large part of children’s books, the Escoleta Vegana cultural project was born, formed by activists in contact with childhood and the literary world. Our goal is to create vegan children’s content that doesn’t exist yet. It all started a couple of years ago, when several vegan families we know commented that they could barely find books with a vegan perspective aimed at young children, the age group from 0 to 5 years. After investigating, we confirmed that, indeed, there was a gap in the first word books, which serve for families and educators, through images, to explain the world around us to early childhood, organizing it by close and identifiable themes. : the house, our body, our environment.
Thus was born the idea of My first vegan visual dictionarya first words book illustrated by Sara Caballería and whose objective is that girls and boys from 0 to 5 years old can learn to respect and live with all animal species without exploiting them, while understanding, normalizing and celebrating veganism as an ethical stance towards life. We live in a speciesist society that conditions us from an early age to think that there must be hierarchies between different animal species, but we believe that it is possible to start from a different, critical and compassionate mental structure.
My first vegan visual dictionary has been created to facilitate this change of perspective. For example, in the book there is no cow with a cowbell (that is, from a farm), but rather a cow without a cowbell nursing her calf. Furthermore, animals are not classified according to the human use that is usually given to them (“farm”, “zoo” or “domestic”) and no hierarchies are established between humans and other animals.
At the moment, we have the book cover and two double pages, and to make the rest possible, we will resort to the reward crowdfunding system or collective financing on the Verkami platform, which allows people who support the project to become patrons and obtain the book in exchange. If we manage to raise the necessary money in the 30 days of the campaign, the book will be offered in paper and digital versions.
Initially it will be published in Catalan and Spanish, with the possibility of also acquiring it in the other two co-official languages of Spain, Basque and Galician, in case we exceed the fundraising goal. We encourage you to leave your email in the form on our website so that we will notify you when the campaign starts.
Other children’s literature is possible. An empathetic literature free of speciesism. Do you want to be part of the change? We encourage you to participate and spread the campaign.
- This text has been written by Mariona Sanfeliu Salvà and reviewed by Alba Serrano
#Educate #veganism #speciesist #world
