The book has already been banned from school libraries in a handful of states in the South, the West and the Northeast,

So it's currently available in... Kansas?

FWIW, I think putting the scr**** word in a kid's book is just tacky.

Susan Patron is no Balzac.

Also- HAH!! :D

Since I'm drunk enough that I'd like to think I'm Mecha's resident librarian (sorry, initapplette, mlis and jessamyn, and probably a few others), I'll go ahead and field this one.

'Banned in school libraries' seems to be intentionally misleading. The book is readily available in school libraries, public libraries and academic libraries, all over the world. In fact, as a Newbery winner, it's pretty much guaranteed that it'll be readily available in libraries forevermore. When an individual librarian decides that a book isn't age-appropriate for her elementary school library, that's quite different from censorship, at least the way the word is normally used. And, in the same way that the book will be available in libraries forevermore, ditto men's genitalia. Whether it's Rabelais, Allen Ginsberg or Then Again, Maybe I Won't, men's genitals, as a topic of literary examination, are here to stay. And, as is fairly common in children's lit, this particular book was written by a librarian, which ought to make it quite clear that librarian opinion on this title is, as usual, divided. I always enjoy seeing library work reach the attention of a larger audience, but, not surprisingly, the reporting is oversimplified at best and willfully misleading at worst. In any case, I'm happy to see people talking about books. And, if you'd like a reading recommendation, just let me know.

Scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum. Goodnight.

Many years back I saw a low budget indie Canadian movie about an author writing a book when one of his characters becomes aware that he is a character in a book. The character finds a computer and hacks into the authors computer and begins to mess with his life. He takes the authors genitalia and only lets him communicate via song and dance. At one point the author dances and sings "hey get on that modem and give me back my scrotum..."

And box, my main motivation in posting this was to make the bad Balzac pun.

I am not proud.

I like how she's not willing to extend the same principle to women's genitalia.

By that I mean she's not willing to say no genitalia at all in quality literature, not that she's not willing to say "But you won’t find men’s genitalia in women's genitalia."

And it was a quality pun arse_hat, we're proud of you even if you're not.

I think that pun just made my whole year. Seriously.

When I was teaching English here I had to explain some fairly interesting terms and or pronunciations, especially when students wanted to understand song lyrics, for which the words they were curious about were rarely in their student Greek/English dictionaries. :) The troubling pronunciation of the "sh" sound (which doesn't exist in the Greek language, and is often confused with the regular "s" sound by early learners) was always reliable for fun mistakes - like "I shit on the bus" instead of "sit on the bus"). But parents here don't seem to be as touchy about this stuff. Or maybe just not in English.

I do understand how a regular teacher shouldn't be required to explain terms in the course of reading assignments that are better left to science classes, or sex ed (I guess that doesn't exist anymore though, eh?), but why should the book be banned from the library? It doesn't need to be included in class assignments. And of course it is so infuriating that in what we like to think of as an advanced and civilized society a simple body part is so shocking. We've hardly progressed beyond the Victorian age of covering piano "limbs" with skirts, have we?

There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum. It's breathtaking. I highly suggest you try it.

"But you won’t find men’s genitalia in quality literature."

I think Voltaire, Shakespeare, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Hemingway, Walt Whitman, and many, many others might disagree with that.

I do not understand why kids aren't taught complete Latin anatomy - including the scrotum, penis, vagina, testicles - before they are allowed to read Beverly Cleary and her malignant, soul-numbing ilk.