Top News- Children's Book Stirs Battle With Single Word - AOL News
Oh my God.... This is great. A book that won the Newberry Medal and the author uses the word Scrotum on the first page. Why, because she likes the way it sounds and because it conjured up an image of "...something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much. It sounded medical and secret, but also important.”
But people are getting their panties all twisted. Take 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.” She said, “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,”
In the story, Lucky, the main character hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum. Anyone who sees this as something Howard Sternish has a pretty vivid imagination.
1 comment:
I cannot stand it when people try to censor what other people can read or not. It drives me mad.
What I think is bizarre is that there's no violence in this book, no swearing, but refers to a body part. It's as if some people want to believe we are world of Ken dolls and such words don't exist.
I think says more about the adults who are fearful of their own bodies and talking about the differences in them than the kids the are trying to "protect." (I think they are really trying to protect themselves from having to talk about such things.)
Anyway, I'm just thrilled there is some more attention at a children's book from this. We should all be more interested in the authors and books of the world.
my 2 cents. Thanks for posting this. I had briefly heard about it, but hadn't read the whole article. I like to begin my mornings with a small rant. ;-)
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