I highly recommend this post by C about the unfolding controversy over a Newberry Award-winning book that contains the word "scrotum." I don't have much to add beyond C's comments, except my generic belief that people are too uptight about letting Our Children explore the real world through books. The real world has scrotums in it, and about half of America's Children have scrotums on them.
Besides, the fact that so many librarians (though not the majority of librarians, it seems) are banning this book really deals a blow to the whole "sexy librarian" image.
No, see, the sexy thing about librarians is that they are so repressed that when they cut loose they are wildcats. They hate scrotums in public but love them in private.
So a lady in the street but a freak in the bed. I dig.
hey!
i might ban the book because it's boring, stupid, and doesn't deserve an award. but i wouldn't ban it because of the word "scrotum".
jon carroll wrote an excellent piece in the chron this week about it. he mentions (in detail) the penis sheath of his daughter's horse (de-light-ful!):
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/a/2007/02/23/DDGRJN7MSO1.DTL
"...except my generic belief that people are too uptight about letting Our Children explore the real world through books." - and other stuff, if you don't mind my adding, other arts, non-modified real world conversation, etc.
Kids are historically not given anywhere near enough credit for astuteness, depth of understanding and ability to process and handle things, but there's this weird tendril of Quakeresque hand-wringing in our current culture just takes the fucking cake.