Scrotum Is Not A Lucky Word

[+ Lucky]

What evil adult would dare use the word "scrotum" in front of a child? Well, not me, but that doesn't leave out the author of the book about Lucky's higher power:

Children’s Book Stirs Battle With Single Word

 

 

By JULIE BOSMAN

Published: February 18, 2007

The word “scrotum” does not often appear in polite conversation. Or children’s literature, for that matter.

 

Yet there it is on the first page of “The Higher Power of Lucky,” by Susan Patron, this year’s winner of the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award in children’s literature. 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.

 

“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 re-opened the debate over what constitutes acceptable content in children’s 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 upstate New York; Missoula, Mont.; Portland, Ore.; and Central Pennsylvania 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 didn’t 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, and librarians in other schools have indicated in the online debate that they may well follow suit. Indeed, the topic has dominated the discussion among librarians since the book was shipped to schools .

 

Pat Scales, a former chairwoman of the Newbery Award committee, said that declining to stock the book in libraries was nothing short of censorship.

 

“The people who are reacting to that word are not reading the book as a whole,” she said. “That’s what censors do — they pick out words and don’t look at the total merit of the book.”

 

If it were any other novel, it probably would have gone unnoticed, unordered and unread. But in the world of children’s books, winning a Newbery is the rough equivalent of being selected as an Oprah’s Book Club title. Libraries and bookstores routinely order two or more copies of each year’s winners, with the books read aloud to children and taught in classrooms.

 

“The Higher Power of Lucky” was first published in November by Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, accompanied by a modest print run of 10,000. After the announcement of the Newbery on Jan. 22, the publisher quickly ordered another 100,000 copies, which arrived in bookstores, schools and libraries around Feb. 5.

 

Reached at her home in Los Angeles, Ms. Patron said she was stunned by the objections. The story of the rattlesnake bite, she said, was based on a true incident involving a friend’s dog.

 

And one of the themes of the book is that Lucky is preparing herself to be a grown-up, Ms. Patron said. Learning about language and body parts, then, is very important to her.

 

“The word is just so delicious,” Ms. Patron said. “The sound of the word to Lucky is so evocative. It’s one of those words that’s so interesting because of the sound of the word.”

 

Ms. Patron, who is a public librarian in Los Angeles, said the book was written for children 9 to 12 years old. But some librarians countered that since the heroine of “The Higher Power of Lucky” is 10, children older than that would not be interested in reading it.

 

“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.”

 

Authors of children’s books sometimes sneak in a single touchy word or paragraph, leaving librarians to choose whether to ban an entire book over one offending phrase.

 

In the case of “Lucky,” some of them take no chances. Wendy Stoll, a librarian at Smyrna Elementary in Louisville, Ky., wrote on the LM_Net mailing list that she would not stock the book. Andrea Koch, the librarian at French Road Elementary School in Brighton, N.Y., said she anticipated angry calls from parents if she ordered it. “I don’t think our teachers, or myself, want to do that vocabulary lesson,” she said in an interview. One librarian who responded to Ms. Nilsson’s posting on LM_Net said only: “Sad to say, I didn’t order it for either of my schools, based on ‘the word.’ ”

 

Booksellers, too, are watchful for racy content in books they endorse to customers. Carol Chittenden, the owner of Eight Cousins, a bookstore in Falmouth, Mass., said she once horrified a customer with “The Adventures of Blue Avenger” by Norma Howe, a novel aimed at junior high school students. “I remember one time showing the book to a grandmother and enthusing about it,” she said. “There’s a chapter in there that’s very funny and the word ‘condom’ comes up. And of course, she opens the book right to the page that said ‘condom.’ ”

 

It is not the first time school librarians have squirmed at a book’s content, of course. Some school officials have tried to ban Harry Potter books from schools, saying that they implicitly endorse witchcraft and Satanism. Young adult books by Judy Blume, though decades old, are routinely kept out of school libraries.

 

Ms. Nilsson, reached at Sunnyside Elementary School in Durango, Colo., said she had heard from dozens of librarians who agreed with her stance. “I don’t want to start an issue about censorship,” she said. “But you won’t find men’s genitalia in quality literature.”

 

“At least not for children,” she added.

[+ deej]

>“But you won’t find men’s genitalia in quality literature.”

 

I beg to differ! Some of the best literature I have features men's genitalia. I spend a fortune on those subscriptions! ;-)

 

Although I'll admit I find the concept of Lucky being banned oddly appealing. :+ }(

[Guest showme43]

what?...the dog's "nut sack" wouldn't have sufficed?

 

:7

[Guest zipperzone]

The mental picture I have of a female librarian is that of a virginal, withered old maid who has had absolutely no exposure to men.

 

I know there are millions of exceptions to the above, but that's what I conjur in my mind when I hear the word.

 

And the way these old biddies are reacting to the word scrotum, does nothing to alter that image.

[AdamSmith]

Rawlinson End

 

...Rawlinson End is presented as the kind of country estate PG Wodehouse wrote about, but gone terribly to seed. Vivian kept himself busy through the 1970s with numerous radio appearances, and through these he amassed a series of stories about Rawlinson End and its inhabitants which he broadcast and eventually gathered them together for an album, Sir Henry At Rawlinson End (1978), released on the Charisma record label.

 

'English as tuppence, changing yet changeless as canal water, nestling in green nowhere, armoured and effete, bold flag-bearer, lotus fed, Miss Havershambling opsimath and eremite, feudal still, reactionary Rawlinson End.'

 

The head of the Rawlinson family is, as before, Sir Henry. Alcoholic, racist, intolerant, sentimental, ex-army, high Tory and low brow, Sir Henry Rawlinson is simply one of the greatest comic creations of all time. He also, it has to be said, gets all the best jokes ('If I had all the money I'd spent on drink, I'd spend it on drink').

 

He is married to Great Aunt Florrie, an altogether more wistful character, seemingly locked in some previous Mitford-girl existence. She is also intensely superstitious ('Consulting a book called "Itching" before she goes to the bog? God's teeth, what did I marry?') and appears to have long since abandoned her sex life. She likes things to be 'nice'. Also resident at Rawlinson End is Sir Henry's brother Hubert ('In his mid-Forties and still unusual').

 

Hubert was, for Stanshall, a form of self-portrait, as Eccles was for Spike Milligan and EL Wisty for Peter Cook. He is essentially an innocent idiot, never a main part of the plot, always slightly outside the action of the world, commenting on everything going on around him in his own twisted way. He walks around on stilts purely for the pleasure of hearing people having to shout up to him, he grows watercress in his ears, and:

 

"In his adolescence, during the summer, in a northerly direction parallel to the Earthly axis, [Hubert] would throw himself naked onto the lawn, and with that loathsome bluey Roman clock-face tattooed about his private parts, think about Jean Harlow very hard, and, from the shadow cast, tell the time with remarkable accuracy."

 

The two other main characters are Mrs. E., their ancient but fiery housekeeper and maid and, everyone's favourite joke, their elderly obsequious butler Scrotum, the wrinkled retainer. There are also the Maynards ('So much incest in that family, even the dog's got a club foot'), relations of the Rawlinsons and whose dinner party at Rawlinson End provides what little plot the album has. Minor characters include Seth Onetooth, landlord of the local pub The Fool & Bladder, Reg Smeeton, resident pub know-it-all ('Did you know there is no proper name for the back of the knee?') and music-hall double-act turned cleaners Teddy Tidy and Nigel Nice...

 

http://www.mustardweb.org/issue1&2/stanshall.htm

[Lookin]

RE: Rawlinson End

 

"My dear Henry, if dirty fingers were trumps, what a splendid hand you'd have!"

[AdamSmith]

RE: Rawlinson End

 

Haw.

[Louis]

RE: Rawlinson End

 

I have never heard anyone use the term scrotum when talking about a dog's balls..

[Rick Munroe]

>What evil adult would dare use the word "scrotum" in front of

>a child?

 

My mother would never have used "scrotum" because she was a strict "ball" and "nut" gal.

[Guest zipperzone]

RE: Rawlinson End

 

>I have never heard anyone use the term scrotum when talking

>about a dog's balls..

 

Perhaps that's because they are not the same thing. Balls are testicles and a scrotum is the sack containing said balls.