With One Word, Children’s Book Sets Off Uproar
 

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.

Personally I think it is stupid, but I wonder what your thought on the subject matter is.

People who want to ban books are beneath my contempt. If my child read this and came to me asking what a scrotum was, I would not be upset or ashamed; you just explain it. It is not like the book contains depictions of graphic sex acts or something like that. It's a dog biting a boy in the ballbag. Not a huge deal here.

A repressed, shrewish librarian? Way to swim against the stereotype there, Ms Nilsson.

At the age of 10 I had to sit through my first sex ed class. Chances are kids by that age have heard far worse in the school yard at lunch or after school. People need to get a grip on something other than their own tender sensabilities.

Simply watching the evening news is far worse than the mention of such a word.

I am never shocked at how prudish people can be. I know we all draw the line somewhere but really... scrotum. A dog's scrotum.

It isn't like she said, the snake bit him on the nut sack or something like that... Scrotum is a proper, technical term for the object in question.

That said... It's rather baffling as to why it's included. Of all the places, the author chose a scrotum. Very likely aware of the reaction that would appear.

No matter how absurd, the loons will appear, it's inevitable. A few days or weeks and it'll be forgotten. At least, until the next book comes up, and mentions labia or something.

Huh, it is pretty funny that the author used the word scrotum.

Little boys have to be careful with those things! I'm sure some kid somewhere has hurt his scrotum.

It's probably there to introduce young boys to the word scrotum.
Let them know they have one, that it's ok, normal, painful to be bit in one, just generally get them thinking and talking about the grown-up notion of sex organs. Pass them from the frank & beans phase...in so far that's possible for young boys ;)

Judy Bloom used similar techniques to bring her young female audience into the knowledge of their bodies and periods and stuff of that nature. I'd say that's one of the roles of children's literature, especially since the 70's. I wouldn't denigrate that function to a publicity stunt, personally.

That's what I was thinking. I chuckled when I saw the word scrotum.

What, are you, like, a ten year old pretending to be an adult??

Words are scary. We should stop using them.

Instead, we should use interpretive dance to communicate.

Let's discuss the topic instead of being disrespectful and insulting people over their opinions.

My desire to be up in arms about possible book bannings is cancelled by the fact that the author seems to be pandering for attention via controversy.

It's not fair to make assumtions about the authors motives before reading the book.

Is it a book designed to educate children about scrotums? Does it have a sticker on the front, 'Now With Scrotum!'? For all I can see, it throws the word out there for the heck of it.

Not all assumed motives are illogical.

Well there is the phrase that will get me funny looks in my morning meeting today.

BOT: Should it surprise anyone that a book would get the hook in a typical American school library? To Kill a Mockingbird is the one that as I've said before amazes me most. But because it discusses rape and the word nigger is used, many seem to equate it as promoting violent sex acts and racism.

In this case, I'd doubt any child is going to be traumatized any more by the use of the word scrotum than they would had the word balls been used. In fact I think balls is less offensive than the parent that can't discuss anatomy with their child and will instead use the term "private parts".

You've obviously never seen me dance. ;) You've just rendered me functionally illiterate. :D

Scrotum. It is a stupid sounding word. Is that really the best they could come up with? Scrotum? Scrotum. Sounds like a Tolkien character. Although...didn't Bilbo have to cross through Labia Minora, on his way to the Desolation of Smaug?

I'm tired of treating children like they need to be educated in a bubble. Kids live in the real world, experience real world events: the good, the bad and the ugly. Every time a book is banned it speaks to the adults and their inability to accept that kids are savvy creatures who see and hear way more than we give them credit for.
When I was that age I was reading the Jackie-O Story and Midnight Express, and seeing images of Vietnam on television. Kids now are exposed to much more explicit media and just life in general.
"Scrotum" seems like such a trivial thing to get all up in arms about.

William S. Burroughs once wrote that words were a virus.

Like, are you, like a, like, preteen, girl?

And I wasn't laughing at the word scrotum, I merely thought it was odd that the author included it in a childrens book. :rolleyes:

Yeah, I had that thought as well.

Interpretive dance would be hard-pressed to emulate a scrotum.

Kid's these days (at least alot of them) are so sexualized it's scary. They are starting younger and younger.

I saw two girls recently at the mall that looked around maybe 10 and 12 wearing tons of make-up, low-ride jeans, HIGH HEELS and basically looking like little sexpots and they were with their parent's. I couldn't believe how acceptable some people think that is.

Frankly, I'd be less worried about a child that is actually interested in reading maybe seeing a word describing a bodypart, than the one that only cares about emulating Britiany Spears.

Ali

You two wanna knock it off. It's like a junior high flashback. :shakehead:

I task snowy with choreographing that interpretation. ;)

C'mon, snowy. Make us feel the essence of the scrotum. Make us one with the scrotum.:thumbsup:

Proponents of book banning would crack me up if it weren't so tragic. Everyone's hopping around on their tiptoes like their rear end is one fire because of a technical term for a perfectly normal body part that's present on approximately 50% of our population. These things don't go well when people make decisions on gut feeling rather than logic. There are worse ways for kids to be educated than through books. The worst is when they aren't armed with the information at all. At what point are kids encouraged to learn about the wide spectrum of ideologies and ideas that exist so they can figure out their own? Ah wait, I guess they often never are.

Alicat is right about kids being sexualized at younger ages, but who's doing that to who? I see girls who are too young to even pick out their own clothes running around in sweatpants with "princess" written on the butt. I see moms putting makeup on their kids on the commuter train in the morning. I could go on and on. I would bet a shiny nickel that some of those same parents (there are so many) would be up in arms about "scrotum". Where are our priorities here? And what about that pesky First Amendment?

When my son was in elementary another kid kicked him between the legs and so my son went in and told the teacher that this kid kicked him in the penis. My son's teacher got upset with my son and told him he should not use "those kind of words" and never did address the kid that kicked my son. When my son came home that day and told me about it I went straight back over to the school to catch the teacher before she left for the day. I asked her what SHE would have said & she said "privates or something" would be fine. WHATEVER! I told her that I had taught my son the proper names of his body and that there is nothing to be ashamed of and that I expected her to apologize to my son for "correcting" him for using the proper term. Then I expected her to apologize for not punishing the kid that kicked him in the PENIS followed by corrective action to the other kid. She did everything I told her I expected of her but I am sure it wasn't what she wanted to do.

My telling of this story was not intended to highjack the thread but to show another example of how the proper use of body parts gets thrown out of wack by closed minded, uptight people.

Yes, I agree with the fact that the author could have had the bite occurr somewhere else and been just as effective. However, for whatever his reasoning to choose the scrotum, at least he used the proper term!

I'm all for that. A political debate would be like Crossfire meets So You Think You Can Dance?



I agree with Charlatan; she used the proper name. What's next?

At first I wondered if the author couldn't have named some other body part in the story... But then I read in a NY Times article that the plot element that involved said scrotum was inspired by real life. One of the author's neighbors had a dog that was bitten on the scrotum by a snake.

What are you gonna do? Protect your kids from real life until they die?

If children's books used more realistic language, eventually there'd be less squeamish parents. Well, eventually...

I too teach my kids the proper terms. I'd rather hear them, than many of the slang terms. I applaud the author for using a real word. Librarians and teachers should all expect students to use proper terms, but I know this is, unfortunatly, an unreasonable expectation today. sigh...

"Sybil Davison has a genius I.Q. and has been laid by at least six different guys."

This is the first line of Forever by Judy Blume. It's one of the most banned books in public schools. What we're seeing here isn't anything new.

There were some strange comments in the text of the article. One person said she didn't think a teacher would want to teach a vocabulary lesson on that word. So don't. Having the book available for students to read doesn't mean you have to teach the book or take vocabulary lessons from it. It isn't a choice of build the curriculum around the book or make sure students never see it.

However, as much as I think it's silly not to stock a Newberry Award winner, that isn't censorship. There's no requirement that any library stock any particular book. Removing it from the library or curriculum after the choice has been made to buy and stock it would be.

Children's and young adult books cover subjects like rape, murder, drug abuse, crises of faith, and have for years. This is actually pretty mild, and the reaction way, way out of proportion to what's actually in the book.

I wonder if the people who are offended by this book would also be offended by their child viewing a cartoon with a bitten scrotum, or a guy getting kicked/hit by a ball in the scrotum...since the word "scrotum" seems to be more offensive than the everyday occurence of such images that are prevalent on TV today.

There are a good many less squeamish parents I'd wager. But it only takes a couple of "righteous" parents who wish to "protect" our children from not only seeing breasts, scrotums and buttocks but hearing about them as well to get the community bowels in an uproar.

Time for some school librarians to admit they're militant lesbians. "Sorry, kids, I'm pissed off at the entire male gender so we're going to shelter you from basic anatomical terms so that you too may someday learn to become gaylords and carpeteers. Have fun playing kick ball!!" I'll bet that the rampant racism in Huck Finn or the incredible violence in Red Badge of Courage are just fine with those idiotic, simpleton, xenophobic hypocrites.

These are the same kind of librarians that burned down Alexandria, that burned books about Jews in Nazi Germany, who destroyed all but a few stories of Norse Mythology when cleansing the land of the pagans.

Nothing like trying to "protect" your kids from life. Reality of it is... eventually they have to live it. Best they know what is in it before its "in their face".

Great point PD. :)

Lessee. A View From the Cherry Tree is a great kids book. It uses the phrase "son of a bitch." No one got upset when it came out. Maybe because the phrase as used referred to a cat ;)

Point being, we've become a nation of dimwits who are terrified of words. Idiotic.

Sounds like they're bigoted in every way except homophobic.

To make an addition to my post (which I wrote while I was getting by ass kicked at Star Wars Battlefront for PS2 by none other than Ch'i), most lesbian teachers are super awesome and deserve nothing but respect. The 'militant lesbian' thing was at the librarians being unreasonably and utterly terrified at the idea of a scrotum.

there lies my scrotum
being what it has to be
How could it be wrong?

HI-HO

Am I the only one who thinks it is actually rather inappropriate? I haven't read the book, of course, so I don't know whether the word scrotum is integral to the story, but I'm betting it's not. I'm not for banning the book, but perhaps changing the word? For everyone saying "yeah, but kids are going to find out about sex and stuff anyway" - that's not an excuse. I read a lot of children's books when I was young, and guess what, none of them said 'scrotum', 'penis', 'vagina' or anything like that. And I didn't grow up twisted and unbalanced. These days, if you really want to make sure kids 'find out' about sex earlier, just let them look around on the internet, they'll find it eventually. I accept, for example, "Chances are kids by that age have heard far worse in the school yard at lunch or after school" - but is that an excuse to include it in a book? Because the kids might have heard the word already?

No, there's no need to ban the book, but was there really need to include the word 'scrotum' when there are many medical terms that mean less adult things? Immediately springing to mind is 'patella'. If anyone's read the book, can they explain why it wouldn't work if the kid had been bitten on the kneecap? Don't just defend the use of the word because it's free speech and kids are going to know what it means eventually anyway. It's still inapproriate. Sometimes, it seems, people try to be so liberal they forget how to be responsible.

So wait a sec... you find it unacceptable that a medical term such as "scrotum" is used once in a children's book, and not for prurient purposes, but letting a child look around on the internet to find out about sex is ok? Also, you not reading "penis" or "vagina" in a book and you not growing up twisted have nothing to do with one another.


I think part of the main point is, it's a body part. Body parts are not "adult" in nature. We all have either a penis or vagina. All of us. The commotion over the word scrotum is just silly. And not for nothing, but defending anything, just on the principles of free speech alone, is exactly what people should do. I've defended free speech many times for things with which I don't agree- but you can't say "oh i don't support free speech on this because I don't agree".

If you don't defend ALL free speech, you are only protecting your own interests- and that is not free speech at all.

A body part is not inappropriate. Using it in a prurient, sexual, or lewd manner, would be- but we all have genitals, and there is nothing "adult" about them.