Are some words just not appropriate for a children’s story? When I saw the headline what came to find was perhaps a swear or some racial remark, but is a part of the anatomy wrong to mention in a children’s story? I guess it depends on what part is being mentioned.
Quote:
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.
“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.”
The inclusion of the word has shocked some school librarians, who have pledged to ban the book from elementary schools, and reopened the debate over what constitutes acceptable content in children’s books. The controversy was first reported by Publishers Weekly, a trade magazine.
With One Word, Children’s Book Sets Off Uproar
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Personally I think it is stupid, but I wonder what your thought on the subject matter is.