What's wrong with this picture?
Read this article today in the New York Times about the controversy surrounding the newest Newberry Award-winning book, The Higher Power of Lucky. Librarians and parents alike are appalled that the nine- to twelve-year-old audience for this book (about a strong and gifted girl, no less!) would be exposed to the word "scrotum" in the first page.
To quote the New York Times, here is the context of this frightening and shockingly corrosive word:
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.”
What a wonderful way to capture the experience of a bright child learning about life! I am so frustrated by this kind of knee-jerk paranoia in this country. Why would you deny a child the correct name for a perfectly normal part of the human body? Are we supposed to tell little boys it's a hooha (oh, no, sorry, that's actually a vagina, if you live in Florida) and keep little girls from knowing anything at all about male anatomy until they get married?
Please. If anyone has a good idea for changing this country from a puritan state to a place where we learn about healthy bodies, and treasure them, at all ages, let me know.