Mumbai: Parents have complained about the content in storybooks which can have adverse effects on children. A Navneet Publication book, ‘It’s Story Time’ was criticised on Twitter on Wednesday as one of the stories involved a shepherd hanging his dog, thereby engendering ideas of animal cruelty in young minds.
The story in question is about a shepherd who manages his flocks of sheep and goats with his dog in a village. But soon the shepherd finds out the dog is eating his sheep and goats. Angry, he decides to punish the dog for his act. The dog asks for forgiveness but the shepherd is unrelenting and calls it mean and hangs it from a tree.
This trail of tweets began when actor Mohan Kapur posted on Twitter stating, “This is to inform you that “Navneet Products” has released a story book that promotes & justifies animal cruelty. If you feel these are not the values our children should learn, I request you to tell them to remove the said chapters: childrensbooks@navneet.com.
A parent, Jayashri Mane, said, “Since when did we start portraying animals especially dogs as mean creatures? Both the pictorial representations and written content is going to create a negative impact on children’s minds. The content is unacceptable and we should not encourage such stories especially for kids.”
Members of the Bombay Bookseller and Publishers Association claimed they have witnessed a large number of parents complaining about unacceptable content in storybooks. A senior member said, “We have stopped selling storybooks as a lot of publishers often print content which affects children. We focus on selling educational books as parents complain to us if they find any unacceptable content in the storybooks.”
