Rachel Rooney has considered quitting because of the reaction to her book

An author and poet has said that she has considered giving up after she was accused of peddling “terrorist propaganda” by transgender activists who criticised her book helping youngsters to accept and understand their bodies.

My Body is Me!, by Rachel Rooney, has been described as representing “an extreme ideology that explicitly targets children” by a fellow children’s author, Clara Vulliamy, creator of the Dotty Detective series.

Rooney, 57, wrote the book to counteract what she described as an “explosion” of titles that promoted the idea that children who felt confused about their gender may be “trapped in the wrong body”.

She said that her book, illustrated by Jessica Ahlberg, taught children to be comfortable with their bodies and featured characters of different