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 ...
You gonna die, Roy.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
A moose once bit my sister on the scrotum.
This stuff is now marketing 101 stuff with the media as the conduit.
If they can milk it, more power to em.
Nor does it often appear in poetry given the difficulty of finding a rhyme.
I take it, it wasn't the dog who was named "Lucky"
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
That wasn't your sisters scrotum, she's so old her thang looks like a wizards sleeve.
"A moose once bit my sister on the scrotum."
Moose bites can be pretty nasty, you know.
Yup, that'll do it.
I've had my nose in a good book a time or two, but that's about it.
I hope you guys remember the little boy on Wonderama, around 1965, who insisted that an octopus had eight testicles.
Sandy Fox was really flummoxed!
Determining what is age-appropriate is, in itself, a subtle form of censorship.
For God's sake, this is a perfectly acceptable, correct scientific word. My kids knew the proper words for body parts when they were five or six (though we tended to continue using the baby words for some years afterward). I don't believe for a moment that school librarians are fainting with horror over a word like scrotum. It's one of the favorite places mooses have for biting sisters so it must be okay. There are a lot of other words for places mooses bite that would not be okay for elementary-school kids.
"Mom! My dog's butthole got run over."
"That's rectum, Son."
"Wrecked him? Heck, it killed him!"
That must have hurt like a b******.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
I'll give it a try:
A snake bit my dog on the scrotum
His nuts hurt so much he can't tote 'em
But this limerick I pen
Ain't for kids six through ten
If the libs want this crap, let's outvote 'em
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