Posted on 02/18/2007 3:25:16 PM PST by billorites
The word “scrotum” does not often appear in polite conversation. Or children’s literature, for that matter.
Yet there it is on the first page of “The Higher Power of Lucky,” by Susan Patron, this year’s winner of the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award in children’s literature. The book’s 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 children’s 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 didn’t 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 ...
Jim Webb is upset he didn't think of this little ditty.
Code 'em
Goad 'em
Hoed 'em
Mowed 'em
Knowed 'em
Owed 'em
Rowed 'em
Sewed 'em
Showed 'em
Stowed 'em
Towed 'em
I hear she is going to tackle TEA BAGGING in her next book
The first thing I thought of was that joke. I see it came to your mind, too. I suspect the author included it for the same reason.
Like a pair of roll-up window blinds, eh?
Pwned 'em
When a freeper named Mr Ramsbotham,
Rhymed 'scrotum' as if it were 'scrawtum,'
I thought what a shame,
Looks like his own name,
Done unhitched the way that we taught 'im.
LMAO!!!
What was your sister doing on the scrotum? Was it some kind of nut case?
LOL! You get an 'A'!
U stole my thunder!...lol....I was working on a longer one...tote 'em comes to mind with scrotum...
I was up in Boston one time and asked a cabbie if he knew a good place to get scrod. <<
Used to be the Combat Zone......
I LOVE these threads..I start to read them, and by the timeI'm done, the tears are rolling....you guys have GREAT senses of humor and your abilities at sarcasm are great..freepers are both very knowledgeable, but VERY entertaining as well....perhaps that's exactly what the other side lacks.....Hmmmmm
I hope the school library also banned that book "Revenge of the Tiger" by Claude Ball.
Can we now expect the counterpart to the Vagina Monologues - the Scrotum Soliloquies?
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