Sunday, February 18, 2007

Dear school librarians:

Scrotum! Scrotum! Scrotum!

I always think of libarians as the last guardians of free speech, but apparently, some school librarians are oh, so disgusted that children will read the word "scrotum" in the Newbury Medal-winning book, The Higher Power of Lucky, by Susan Patron, that they are banning it.

What is wrong with these people? It's a body part, for god's sake. In the book, a rattlesnake bites a dog on the scrotum, a plot device which Patron drew from an actual incident involving her friend's dog.

"I think it’s a good case of an author not realizing her audience,” said Frederick Muller, a librarian at Halsted Middle School in Newton, N.J. "If I were a third- or fourth-grade teacher, I wouldn’t want to have to explain that."

According to Muller, third- and fourth-grade students do not know what a scrotum is, and I suppose they don't, but why?