I once wondered if things like cultural sensitivity and political correctness were getting out of hand. Now I know they’ve not only gotten out of hand, they escaped into the lab, mated with the mutant chickens, spawned deadly, acid-spewing offspring and are tunneling into the earth’s core where they will plot to end all life on this planet.
With One Word, Children’s Book Sets Off Uproar
We have here: The Higher Power of Lucky, by Susan Patron. This book won this year’s Newbery Medal, the highest honor any children’s literature can achieve. Now the book has been banned in numerous libraries across southern, western, and northeast states, and librarians have taken up arms against one another over its very existence.
Why? Because of a passage where the 10-year-old orphan heroine overhears another character saying their dog was bitten on the scrotum by a rattlesnake.
The passage continues: “Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much. It sounded medical and secret, but also important.”
One freakin’ word. And suddenly we’re reduced to living in trees and flinging monkey poo at one another. One librarian called the word insertion a Howard Stern-type shock treatment. Pardon? Are we going to need to put the audiobook on satellite radio so it can get past the censors? Another librarian is quoted as saying, “you won’t find men’s genitalia in quality literature…At least not for children.”
First off, the scrotum is a dog’s (Point of sanity: A dog is not a man, however much Dean Koontz might wish otherwise). Plus, the dog has been bitten by a rattlesnake! Poor pup. Can we accede the dignity of getting the facts right before we ban the book?
Fortunately a few voices of reason have their own bullhorns. From the article:
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.”
I really wonder if there was someone who found this book and turned to his friend one night, after a few martinis, and said: “Simon, I’ll bet you the betrothal of my son to your most eligible daughter that I can create a national stink about the first word I flip to in this book.”
And Simon said, “Pshaw, George. That there is an award-winning children’s story. What could be in there that could possibly make anyone turn their head? The bet is on.”
Fwip.
Point.
Scrotum.
And George twiddled his oily black mustache in glee.
The game is on. And the book-burners are now priming their flint and tinder.
I see that smile.