I think classification is important. That said, I’m not so concerned with books. While I don’t want my kids reading First Law Trilogy or Throne of Glass , that sort of content also isn’t really accessible language-wise to them. In that way, books tend to self-classify themselves with the level of language found within.

Reading between the lines of this article, I think “Emma Hussey, a digital criminologist and child safeguarding expert at the Australian Catholic University’s Institute of Child Protection Studies” is probably more concerned with the normalisation of LGBTQ characters in modern fiction. She specifically said “Just because there are cartoons on the front, [it] doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to be developmentally appropriate for a 12 to 17-year-old”.

Translation: ‘We don’t like the Heartstopper books because they’re teenage love stories all about gay boys’