Parents are being warned about a pornographic book that resembles one intended for children due to its illustrated cover and is being placed next to the children’s section of some stores.
Icebreaker, by English author Hannah Grace, features two illustrated characters on the front (one is an ice skater and the other a hockey player) and has become popular with school-aged children.
Published in Australia by Simon and Schuster in 2023, Icebreaker has been a global success, selling over a million copies.
The novel, a love story set in the United States between two college students, might seem like a harmless romance at first glance.
Its children’s cover is similar to an Alexandra Moody novel featuring a romance with an ice skater, Rival Darling, which is aimed at younger readers.
But that’s where the similarities end.
Icebreaker contains a lot of explicit content which has made the novel and its contents widely shared on TikTok.
Parents are warned that the innocent-looking book uses the word “fuck” more than 380 times and has scenes depicting rough sex. The age reported.
The illustrated cover of Icebreaker (pictured) has confused parents and children into thinking the novel is age-appropriate, but its content is explicit.
The cover of Icebreaker is similar to that of a book aimed at children aged 13-18, Rival Darling by Alexandra Moody (pictured)
Many of the scenes are not appropriate for children under 18 and have phrases such as “fuck me like you hate me.”
When the female protagonist says she wants to stop having sex, the male protagonist replies, “Don’t give up, Anastasia.”
There’s also another scene where the male lead says, ‘One day, I’m going to fuck that pretty little mouth of yours, and you’re not going to be a bossy, impatient little brat.’
A mother has told how she was tricked into buying the novel.
Alyshia Graham was gathering books for her stepdaughter for the MS Read-a-Thon when the 10-year-old asked for a copy of Icebreaker, noting that other girls at her school already had it.
The stepmother thought the cover looked like other young adult (YA) novels, so she read the back of the book and flipped through the pages before purchasing it from her local Big W.
“It was located in the vicinity of what I would call the children’s area, maybe just outside the children’s book section,” she said.
“I didn’t really think much about the cover.”
A warning about the barcode was placed on the back cover for Australian readers (pictured)
What she didn’t see was the warning on the back of the book, in small print, that said the book contained “content for ages 18 and up. Not suitable for young readers.”
When Ms. Graham got home with the book, it was her 11-year-old son who told her about a TikTok trend in which people purposely put Icebreaker in the kids’ section.
The mother decided to take a closer look at the book and was shocked by its “very, very explicit” content and was not prepared for its “pornographic nature.”
But it wasn’t just Ms Graham who was shocked by the sexual content: a primary school principal warned parents twice this year about the book.
A Victorian primary school teacher has issued a warning (pictured) to parents to be aware that the novel is not suitable for school-aged children.
Wandong Primary School principal Kelly Morrow wrote about the book’s content in the Victorian school’s April and May newsletters.
“It is concerning that while the book is marketed as a sigh-inducing romance novel, with a cover that appeals to tweens, it contains highly adult material with an age rating of 18+,” she wrote.
‘We are concerned that many parents are unaware of the content of the text due to the way the book is marketed and are therefore unwittingly putting their children at risk of exposure to adult content.’
Simon and Schuster’s publicity director, Anna O’Grady, said the publisher had purchased the book with the original cover but decided to put a small warning on the back of the book, above the barcode.
Ms O’Grady told The Age she could understand why parents might think the book was suitable for school-aged children, but noted that Icebreaker is not the only adult fiction novel to have an illustration on its cover.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Simon and Schuster and Wandong Primary School for comment.