Children’s books are marked by speciesism. Drawings of aquariums or canaries in cages in children’s rooms as another decorative element; a dog tied to a wooden house outside, 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 beach rocks or taking a horseback ride.
To combat 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 content for kids that doesn’t exist yet. It all started a few years ago, when several vegan families we know said they could barely find books with a vegan perspective aimed at young children, the 0-5 age range. After investigation, we confirmed that there was indeed a gap in the first word books, which are used by families and educators, through images, to explain the world around us in early childhood, by organizing it by similar and identifiable themes: the house. , our body, our environment.
Thus was born the idea of My first vegan visual dictionarya book of first words illustrated by Sara Caballería and whose objective is that girls and boys aged 0 to 5 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 a very young age to think that there must be hierarchies between different animal species, but we believe that it is possible to start from a different mental structure, critical and compassionate .
My first vegan visual dictionary was created to facilitate this change in perspective. For example, in the book there is no cow with a bell (i.e. from a farm), but rather a cow without a bell nursing her calf. Furthermore, animals are not classified according to the human use usually given to them (“farm”, “zoo” or “domestic”) and no hierarchy is established between humans and other animals.
At the moment we have the cover of the book and two double pages, and to make the rest possible we will use the crowdfunding or collective funding reward system on the Verkami platform, which allows people who support the plan to become patrons and obtain the book in exchange. If we manage to raise the necessary funds within 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 objective of fundraising. We encourage you to leave your email in the form on our website so that we will notify you when the campaign begins.
Other children’s literature is possible. Empathetic literature without speciesism. Do you want to be part of the change? We encourage you to participate and spread the campaign.
- This text was written by Mariona Sanfeliu Salvà and revised by Alba Serrano
