Neutering Lucky

If you’re a regular reader of Thoughts2Page, you’ll know that I get my panties in a bunch over the potential banning of a book. I have huge issues with anyone being denied the opportunity to choose what they – or their children – read. In recent days, another book has caused a hullabaloo… and it’s all because of one word. SCROTUM. Did you catch that? I typed: SCROTUM. Are you all still with me? I thought so. Now, how many of you are thinking, “Yeah ok. Scrotum. Big deal. What’s she on about this time?” Well, the inclusion of that word on page one of a book called, “The Higher Power of Lucky,” by Susan Patron, has some school librarians all over the United States in an uproar. They want to ban this book... again, based on ONE WORD. And, “The Higher Power of Lucky” is not just any book, either… it won this year’s most coveted prize in children’s literature, The Newbury Medal. But… that significant accolade aside… it has the NERVE to contain the word SCROTUM. I’ve done some research about this book and it turns out that Lucky is a 10 year old orphan girl who, among other things, is getting all set to be a grown up. She hears a conversation through a wall where someone says they saw a rattlesnake bite their dog on the scrotum. As a 10 year old, Lucky is intrigued by the word. She finds it incredibly interesting because of how it sounds. Yet, “how it sounds” to a bunch of elementary school librarians is ban-worthy. One went so far as to say that “quality literature” does not contain “men’s genitalia.” For heaven’s sake! The author, a public librarian herself, did not write that the dog was bitten on its BIG, HAIRY BALL SAC!! She wrote “scrotum” – and there actually WAS a dog that was bitten in just such a manner. She was relating a true incident. Evidently, one of the justifications for a ban is that certain people don’t want to have to explain the word “scrotum” to the intended audience, which is 9-12 year olds. I say that you explain things in an age-appropriate manner. Could children (IF they even bother to ASK!) not be told that a scrotum is a pouch of skin on the dog’s underside and leave it at that? Will they be traumatized for life?! Seriously, how many kids have probably already been exposed to an unaltered family dog, sprawled open for the whole world and Grandma to see, going all to town licking JUST such an area? The problem appears to be that some people get so hung up on words that they lose sight of CONTEXT. I really don’t find anything salacious in the description of the injury to the dog. Yet, the offended librarians feel that it disqualifies the book from being able to be read aloud because no one would want to have to say – or explain – “the word.” With all the vulgar, HATEFUL words that come out of 10 year olds’ mouths these days, they don’t want to have to explain the anatomically-correct term “SCROTUM”? I think some of these librarians might be well-served to let their buns down for a day or two and spend some time out on the playground, rather than in the stacks. It seems that, instead of living in the MTV generation, they’re still stuck in “The Wonder Years.” Now THAT reminds me of an interesting bit of trivia. Did you know, in that very successful, well-loved, long-running, Emmy and Peabody Award winning television show, big brother Wayne Arnold had a nickname for his little brother, Kevin? Sure did. He called him “Scroat.” Just sayin’.