Posted on 02/18/2007 3:25:16 PM PST by billorites
The word scrotum does not often appear in polite conversation. Or childrens literature, for that matter.
Yet there it is on the first page of The Higher Power of Lucky, by Susan Patron, this years winner of the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award in childrens literature. The books heroine, a scrappy 10-year-old orphan named Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.
Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much, the book continues. It sounded medical and secret, but also important.
The inclusion of the word has shocked some school librarians, who have pledged to ban the book from elementary schools, and reopened the debate over what constitutes acceptable content in childrens books. The controversy was first reported by Publishers Weekly, a trade magazine.
On electronic mailing lists like Librarian.net, dozens of literary blogs and pages on the social-networking site LiveJournal, teachers, authors and school librarians took sides over the book. Librarians from all over the country, including Missoula, Mont.; upstate New York; Central Pennsylvania; and Portland, Ore., weighed in, questioning the role of the librarian when selecting or censoring, some argued literature for children.
This book included what I call a Howard Stern-type shock treatment just to see how far they could push the envelope, but they didnt have the children in mind, Dana Nilsson, a teacher and librarian in Durango, Colo., wrote on LM_Net, a mailing list that reaches more than 16,000 school librarians. How very sad.
The book has already been banned from school libraries in a handful of states in the South, the West and the Northeast,
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Speaking of seafood, I always thought "scrod" sounded a little obscene.
- - Dr. Evil
ping
Art Linkletter's Kids Say the Darnedest Things had a little girl wishing to be an octopus so she could hug everyone with her testicles.
LOL!
I was up in Boston one time and asked a cabbie if he knew a good place to get scrod. He said, "I've heard that question a thousand times, but never in the pluperfect subjunctive tense."
Rim Shot
LOL. One of my favorite punchlines. :)
Evidently 'she' wasn't your sister after all.
There once was an agile factotum
Who climbed up his family totem...
That reminds me of a friend of mine from Nantucket.
Remarkable fellow, really.
Wrong group of people. School librarians and public librarians have little in common.
He aimed his rifle and he got 'em;
Shot 'em both right through the scrotum.
Even when WFTD class is out, Truthie still phones in with the poetry.....
Super Bowl = childrens book? Now I see why you're having trouble....
OPP,ALABAMA,,,,home of the Rattle Snake Rodeo,,,1st weekend in April...Yall come..
Nice small town event...
Is Roy now a pointer or a setter?
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