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Librarians Ban Children’s Book Using “S-Word“
20-Feb-2007
Written by: Jeannine Coppola
Popular book causes controversy.
According to the Times Online, an award-winning children's book about a 10-year-old girl trying to figure out life's questions, has caused a major controversy in America among librarians. Susan Patron's The Higher Power of Lucky, which won America's top children's book award, is being banned from school libraries for using the word "scrotum" on its first page, even though it refers to the male genitalia of a dog.
The Higher Power of Lucky also deals with other mature issues as the main character, Lucky, witnesses adults seeking a "higher power" to help with their drug and alcohol addictions. For example, in the second paragraph, Lucky listens in on a drunk named Sammy's conversation, who uses the "s-word." By winning the Newbery Medal, which is considered the Pulitzer of children's literature, the book should be almost guaranteed a place in every school library. However, the use of the word "scrotum" has made the novel questionable, to say the least. Since last month, it has gone into a second print of 100,000, but has also been labeled inappropriate for its readership of 9 to 12-year-olds by library professionals as well as bloggers.
Dana Nilsson, a librarian in Durango, Colorado, was one of the first to complain, writing on LM-Net, an electronic mailing list that is read by more than 16,000 school librarians, "This book included what I call a Howard Stern-type shock treatment just to see how far they could push the envelope...How very sad.”
Author, Susan Patron, was a librarian herself and developed a collection of children's books in a Los Angeles public library. She claims she was shocked by the negative reactions to her story, stating, “If I were a ten-year-old and learned that adults were worried that the current Newbery book was not appropriate for me, I’d figure out a way to get my mitts on it anyway.” She continued, "The child who learns the definition of scrotum in this way, through reading and talking with adults, is armed with, for one thing, an alternative to finding answers through first-hand experience,” she said.
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