The Scrotum, the Newbery Prize and the Librarian

"But you won’t find men’s genitalia in quality literature … at least not for children"

Miffed librarian

So have you heard about the scrotum, the Newbery Prize and the librarian?

Apparently some U.S. librarians are so offended by the word “scrotum” in the first few pages of Newbery winner The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron that they’ve decided to take it off their shelves. American message boards and blogs are buzzing alternately pro and con, with indignation and bile.

You can get a good flavour of the discussion from the comments on Fusenumber8’s blog titled Oh, Doggone It (the scrotum in question belongs to a dog).

YA author Scott Westerfield writes an amusing riposte then invites his readers to propose their "favourite dorky-dirty words".

Susan Patron who was "shocked and horrified" when the controversy reared its ugly head out of a New York Times article, wrote in Publishing News:

If I were a parent of a middle-grade child, I would want to make decisions about my child's reading myself—I'd be appalled that my school librarian had decided to take on the role of censor and deny my child access to a major award-winning book. And if I were a 10-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

Patron should know. Being a librarian is her day job.

And here for your reading pleasure (or otherwise), a list of children’s books with the word scrotum in it.

Who are we writing for?

Remember that thing I wrote about how authors have to keep up with their readers?

Wanna meet one of our readers? This kid is 14 years old, and he's got a lot more narrative sense than I ever had at that age. He makes a mean video too.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

New Yorker's 'Bah, humbug!' round-up of picture books

...why do we tell stories to our children? In my experience, mostly it is to get them to shut up.

A review so negative it manages sneery when it's trying to be complimentary

Ah, writers and children's book lovers, if you want to get really, really angry, read the New Yorker piece Goodnight Mush: The Year in Picture Books

Written by critic Elizabeth Kolbert, it describes the picture book as an "instrument of control" and then proceeds to demonstrate how some classic picture books — such as Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, Madeleine by Ludwig Bemelmans, Bedtime for Frances by Russell Hoban — pretend that children have power only to bring them down in the end.

The tension, or, if you prefer, bad faith implicit in this arrangement is itself one of the great themes of bedtime literature, and many of the tales now regarded as classics celebrate children as artists (and artists as children), only, in the end, to sell them both out.

Meanwhile, picture books for today's "post-spanking set"tend to do just the opposite — "that the old order be uprooted and the fool become the king".

After a humourless discussion of scatological PBs — Walter the Farting Dog Goes on a Cruise by William Kotzwinkle and Glenn Murrey, (illustrator Audrey Colman),Gee Whiz! It's All ABout Pee by Susan E. Goodman (illustrator Elwood H. Smith) and The Truth About Poop by Goodman and Smith again — she proceeds to describe unsavory details of the beloved author Margaret Wise Brown, whose bedtime book Goodnight Moon celebrates its 60th anniversary this year.

This is a review so negative it manages sneery even when it's trying to be complimentary. As Alice Pope, editor of the Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market, commented in her blog:

Never have I read an article on children's books that sucked the joy out of them. Never have I read an article on children's books that made me want to cry.