Mar 05 2007
Penis, Vagina, Vulva, and Scrotum
A bunch of idiots want to ban the award (the Newbery, for children’s literature) winning book The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron because it contains the word “scrotum” several times. The author writes about the controversy:
There’s a direct correlation between fear of naming body parts and kids’ interest in finding out about them. To figure out the world, children have to unscramble a mishmash of secrets, clues, overheard tidbits, half-truths, out-of-context information, and their own observations. The lucky ones discover the Robie Harris/Michael Emberley books, and/or they have access to parents or teachers or librarians who will answer their questions and define unknown words.
librarian.net’s post about it includes some amusing comments, such as:
Some parts of the body are evil and should not be acknowleged. We should be thankful for the Christian librarians who show us the righteous path.
There are some intelligent comments there, too.
(via Larocque and Roll, who, as a librarian, provides an excellent opinion about the matter)
Here’s Wikipedia’s list of banned books.