Writer Pim Lammers withdraws as author of the Children’s Book Week poem 2023 due to death threats. let them know. The threats followed shortly after Lammers was announced as the author of the poem.
Lammers published the literary story in 2015 Trainer, about the relationship between a teenage boy and his soccer coach. Excerpts from that story circulated on social media in recent days and led to the death threats. In addition, Family in Danger, an action group that claims to oppose, among other things, “the LGBT dictatorship and the sexualization of children”, started this week a petition against Lammers as the author of the poem and former Forum for Democracy member Wybren van Haga argued Parliamentary questions about.
Lammers says that he and his immediate environment have received “an enormous amount of threats”. Writing a poem is “not worth death threats” to him, says Lammers, who has filed a report. The CPNB calls the death threats “terrible” and makes it clear that literary freedom is “under extreme pressure here that is unacceptable to the CPNB.” Rather, the organization consciously chose Lammers as the author of the poem, because his books are about “a very topical theme: being able to be yourself as a child”.
The 29-year-old Lammers has written several children’s books and books for adults, including The little lamb that is a pig. He won a Zilveren Griffel in 2018 for this first transgender picture book.