A children’s book promoting cross-dressing was handed out this week to a 4-year-old’s Kansas City-area preschool class, according to the girl’s livid grandfather.

“This is what my granddaughter’s teacher sent home today with all the kids,” Jim Clay of Kansas City, Kansas, wrote on Facebook Monday night of the picture book Jacob’s New Dress. He wrote that his granddaughter is 4-and-a-half and he is peeved.

The incident occurred at Turner Elementary School. Clay’s post, which is not public, was reposted on several conservative Facebook pages in the area.

Clay told The Lion that apparently all the kids in the class had been given the book with instructions to read it with their parents and then be prepared to discuss it in class.

The bizarre choice of books might help explain some of his granddaughter’s strange questions of late, Clay said. 

“We had started to see some little questions that she was coming home with. Here about a week and a half ago she had come home and asked her mom if her brother would always be her little brother, or would he be her little sister,” Clay said. 

The grandfather said he doesn’t know if the book assignment was the teacher’s decision or the school district’s, but he intends to find out. The book has also been a point of controversy for being read to kindergartners in Lawrence Township Public Schools in New Jersey. 

“I’m not necessarily a crusader so much. I don’t know if God’s called me to be a crusader,” Clay said. “But at least for my own granddaughter I want to be able to have the option to keep her home on [book discussion] day if her parents are OK with it. I don’t think this should be, obviously, any kind of a subject for a school to be speaking about.  

“The sexualization of our children in society today is just disgusting. The grooming that’s taking place is disgusting.  

“My kids used to dress up like Power Rangers when they were kids, and we’d pretend that they were a Power Ranger with them. I’m not interested in pretending that guys are girls and girls are guys. 

“All three of my kids grew up in the Turner district. If there was any questionable material, they always allowed us to opt out or keep our kid home that day, and they would keep us informed. But apparently not with this.” 

Clay said his granddaughter’s parents agree with him, but not forcefully. So he intends to press the issue with the district himself. Noting that the Chinese are clearly fed up with COVID lockdowns and are openly rebelling against one of the most dictatorial regimes in the world, Clay said Americans should show a little gumption as well. 

“I’m not sure how many rights I have as a grandparent, but as a citizen of the community and a taxpayer I think I have the right to ask questions,” he said. 

The Lion reached out to a district spokesperson to ask what the purpose of a book about cross-dressing could be for a 4-year-old preschooler’s education, and if parents had been consulted about it. 

The Lion also asked Clay what he thought the purpose of the book was. 

“I guess to question any and everything – to not have any absolutes in our society anymore,” he said. “You know, I’m more of a libertarian. I think God gave us free choice and we have to honor that. But at the same time, we should have standards within our society. And it’s because we’ve allowed those standards to slip, we are where we are. 

“I believe sin is progressive. You don’t just wake up one day and decide to rob a bank. It usually starts with a piece of candy or a candy bar and then gradually moves on up to an escalation and progression. Well, the same thing, I think, with sexual sin within our society. It is progressive in nature, and I’m not sure where it’s going to end. That’s why you have to cut it off, I think, at the very beginning.” 

John Altevogt, an acquaintance of Clay’s, reposted the grandfather’s Facebook post on several sites – and got pushback from some commenters who saw nothing wrong with the book and claimed opposition to it was an attempt to bully and ridicule others. 

“No, I’m not doing any of the above,” Altevogt told The Lion. “In fact, if anybody’s being bullied, it’s these kids and their parents – who had no say in whether this kind of material was going to be handed out to their children. 

“The same people that would push this would go berserk if I tried to hand out a passage from Romans to a child.” 

The agenda is clear enough, Altevogt says. 

“It’s trying to confuse children about gender. It’s trying to break down the boundaries of normalcy. You know, kids play dress up when they’re little kids. But this is not that. This is something that is clearly part of an agenda that’s designed to confuse kids about gender. 

“It promotes, basically, the trans agenda, the leftist agenda that, you know, there are multiple genders out there, that gender is fluid, that you can change (it) and do whatever you want whenever you want. And promoting this amongst young kids. And we now have a multibillion-dollar industry of changing people’s gender at an age when they really have no idea what they’re doing.”