Sometimes that Newberry Medal can come back and bite you in the . . .
With One Word, Children’s Book Sets Off Uproar
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. - New York Times, February 18, 2007
I'm sorry, you can't spill your Starbucks latte in a Barnes & Noble these days without some of it landing on a copy of Everyone Poops. And where was the outrage about that execrable Willy Wonka remake that, no, I didn't actually see?
Here's a nice bit of unrecognized irony:“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.”Heaven forbid someone might think the children themselves are the audience, and not prudish teachers shifting in their seats during storytime.
posted at 5:11 PM
1 Comments:
Ha! My nephew Jacob learned that word when he was 2, and stung by a jellyfish there while swimming (naked) in a Norwegian fjord.
I myself am a firm believer in teaching children proper terms for their body parts (surprise surprise).
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