Alarming Female

Salt Lake City at night #4
February 16, 2007

Whoopsy Daisy mentions the 2007 Newbery Medal winner, The Higher Power of Lucky, which has been banned from several libraries due to the fact that the word “scrotum” is found on the first page. According to the New York Times,

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.

Many teachers make a practice of reading Newbery winners aloud to their classes, and may agree with the librarian who stated, “I don’t think our teachers, or myself, want to do that vocabulary lesson.”

Pardon me for saying it, but people shouldn’t be teaching our children with their heads up their arses.

Most children have seen dogs and often the particular offending body part is quite noticable. Couldn’t a teacher just say, “that’s the part that hangs down below the tail on some dogs?” All that students would want to know, is what was bitten by the rattlesnake, and be on with it. Hey, you with the dirty mind! Yeah, you, teacher! Get a grip.

I’ve stated many times that librarians are my heroes, and as a teacher myself I certainly have nothing against the vocation in general. But this sort of ridiculous self-righteousness gives teachers a bad name. Thanks to reactionary librarians and teachers like these, this book won’t even be in some libraries for children to read on their own, should they want to.

So when do kids get that particular vocabulary lesson, hmmm? Testicular cancer is the most common cancer in males age 15 - 34. And guess where one finds one’s “testiculars”? That’s right–in the scrotum.

But ssshhhhh. We wouldn’t want them to know that word.