A classmate complains that Jacob likes to wear girl clothes, but Jacob’s parents and his teacher are nonjudgmental and supportive. Jacob and his mother make a dress that he proudly wears to school. His father says, “Well, it’s not what I would wear, but you look great.”

The school system’s superintendent, Ann Clark, said in a statement that the system had planned to use the book as part of an “age-appropriate lesson” for Child Abuse Prevention Month.

The lesson was intended to help students recognize harassment and bullying and teach them what to do if it happens, she said. “The initial first-grade book selection, which focuses on valuing uniqueness and difference, has been replaced due to some concerns about the book,” she said.

Instead, the school system said, the book “Red: A Crayon’s Story,” about a blue Crayon with a red label, will be used.

The decision about the book came one year after North Carolina was the target of lawsuits, economic boycotts and intense criticism for legislation known as House Bill 2. The legislation curbs legal protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and requires transgender people in public buildings to use the bathroom that corresponds with the gender on their birth certificate. An effort in December to repeal the legislation failed.

Ian and Sarah Hoffman, the authors of “Jacob’s New Dress,” wrote in the book that when their son Sam was in preschool “he had long hair, wore dresses, and loved the color pink.” He also liked “traditional ‘boy’ things like knights, castles and dinosaurs,” they wrote, adding that he was “gender nonconforming; we liked to call him a pink boy — the male equivalent of a tomboy.”

In an email, Mr. Hoffman rejected the notion that the book was a way to indoctrinate young people. The suggestion “that a book can turn someone gay, or transgender, or anything else is bizarre,” he wrote.