Back when I was little, among the few programmes for children on the handful of channels on TV was Sesame Street, a collection of fascinating, unique characters.

Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster and of course, Bert and Ernie. This lovable, inseparable duo lived together and nobody worried about it, or the fact that they shared the same bedroom.

As children we thought no more about it than that, in the Muppet Show, the love interest of a very possessive female pig should be a green frog. Why shouldn’t a pig love a frog? Why shouldn’t two men live together?

Fast forward a few years and I was delving into books. Among my favourites at that age were the Famous Five series of books by prolific children’s writer Enid Blyton. The Five were four children accompanied by a dog. Julian, Dick and Anne were siblings, and George was their cousin.

In the very first book, that was written in 1942, the siblings meet their cousin for the first time and are surprised to discover that their cousin, who they had been told was a girl called Georgina, insists on being treated as a boy, wears boys’ clothes and has short hair and indeed only answers to the name of George.

Again, none of us kids really thought that was particularly odd. Why wouldn’t a girl want to get into adventures and climb trees and solve mysteries?

On TV, several new (and colour) channels featured series like Lady Oscar (1972), a story about a young woman living in France, raised as a boy in order to succeed her father as Captain of the Palace Guard.

She is a woman and embraces her femininity, but ignores the social expectations of women to become an accomplished soldier and officer, attracting the romantic attention of both men and women, though Oscar’s dedication to her duty and to the people of France drive her throughout the series. Another series, which came later, was Ranma½ (1987) – a youth who would transform into a girl or a boy when splashed with cold or hot water respectively. In the Sailor Moon Series, Neptune and Uranus (first appeared in 1994) are openly lesbian, while the Sailor Starlights are males who can transform into females at will.

I wonder how many trans boys saw in George a role model, showing them that it’s OK to identify with being a boy despite being born with a female body

All of these stories were intended for children and youths of various ages, but I can’t remember any of my friends saying they were prohibited from watching or reading them, or were confused by them. If anything, they may have countered some of the casual homophobic undercurrent that was quite common in secondary school.

I wonder how many trans boys saw in George a role model, showing them that it’s OK to identify with being a boy despite being born with a female body. How many of the rest of us saw that if a girl wanted to be treated like a boy, so to speak, you just accept that just as Julian, Dick and Anne did. Of course we could go back in time and look at Shakespeare’s plays which often blur the lines between the gender roles of his time.

Fast forward again, to 2015.

A collection of books, written and illustrated for children, is donated to the Education Ministry.

Not Every Princess is a poem that tells girls that they can be a princess or a pirate, a teacher or a scientist. And Tango Makes Three is a story about two real male penguins in Central Park Zoo who adopt a baby penguin – Tango.

The Different Dragon is about a boy who is making up a bedtime story about a dragon – a dragon who likes to stomp around but also to eat ice cream and make friends. The fact that this boy has two moms is a minor detail. Other stories are about having two dads, or separated families, or other differences.

None of these books are about sex, of course.

The one book which is aimed at teenagers is about a boy who seeks the advice of his gay friend about his image and style, and as they become friends he starts to see some of the discrimination that his friend has to face.

And yet it is these books that came in for a coordinated wave of criticism in the past weeks – criticism that was, for the most part, not based on the books themselves but on what some people assumed they contain.

I lost count of how many times I repeated on social media that no, the books do not contain instructions on how to have sex or how to masturbate or anything sexual at all.

Children learn much more easily than adults. From a young age they can learn to be tolerant just as they can learn to discriminate.

What we should be aiming for as a society is to raise a generation that accepts the differences of others, to live in harmony with those whose skin colour, beliefs, family model, home or gender identity is not the same.

Building this society involves parents and teachers, home and school – and books that introduce these topics in an age-appropriate manner.

Ramon Casha is chairman of the Malta Humanist Association.