From: bfahey at comcast.net <bfahey>
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2007 20:44:39 +0000

It's a pretty sad comment when librarians cringe at the word "scrotum". It's a perfectly fine anatomical term, like spleen, corpus collosum, or iris. Should kids go through life avoiding talking about their bodies? Why?

Here's how I plan to handle it next week, when we use the book in a literature circle. I'm going to tell the kids that there is a word on the first page that will definitely get their attention, then I'm going to read a definition for scrotum from the dictionary, then I'm going to hold up a picture of the human body, point to the scrotum and then we're going to start reading the book.

Isn't it ironic, or hideous, that the bodies (U.S. and Iraqi) keep piling up overseas, and what some librarians are getting upset about is a harmless word on the page? Isn't the daily recounting of car bombs, IEDs, suicide bombs, downed helicopters and body counts that we get from the internet or television far more injurious? How many of those librarians who are opposed to having a vocabulary lesson about "scrotum" would be OK having a vocabulary lesson about the term "prosthetic limb" during a discussion about people who are being blown to bits in Iraq? And, finally, which do you think is more scary to a child, having a prosthetic limb (or two or three), or having a scrotum?

Brian Fahey
 -------------- Original message ---------------------- From: druthgo at sonic.net
> This page was sent to you by: druthgo at sonic.net.
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> I refrain rom scathing comments about those who are purported to work with. not
> against, children
>
>
> BOOKS | February 18, 2007
> Children's Book Stirs Battle With Single Word
> By JULIE BOSMAN
> The word "scrotum" is on the first page of "The Higher Power of Lucky," which
> won the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award in children's literature.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/books/18newb.html?ex=1172379600&en=d2aecc89e2c
> 748de&ei=5070&emc=eta1
>
>
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Received on Sat 17 Feb 2007 02:44:39 PM CST