Warning: contains 'scrotum'

The Newbery isn't the only award given out at this time of year.

By now you've almost certainly heard the shrieks and gasps emanating from the easily scandalized over this year's Newbery Award-winning children's book, The Higher Power of Lucky. Why? Because the book contains the word 'scrotum' and therefore must be banned from school libraries.

Never mind that roughly half the attendees of any given school likely possess scrota, and never mind that 'scrotum' is a handy, accurate name to describe a body part. The word makes some people uncomfortable and must be silenced.

Who, exactly, is discomfited by this word? Not my boys, both of whom knew what to call their scrota (or 'scrotes,' for short) by the time they were two. What was I supposed to do, make something up? So far, knowing the correct term for a part of their own bodies hasn't shattered their ability to function in the world. If you didn't know better, you'd think they were normal children and not strange beings who know what their nutsacks are called.

But some adults, who have had much longer to get used to the idea of testicles than children have, can't deal. I'd say they're on the extreme end of the sensitivity spectrum. Even my beloved perinatologist, pointing out the parts of one of my fetuses during an ultrasound years ago, said 'scrotum.' Oh sure, you may think, that's all fine and well for a medical guy. But he had his issues, too. He pointed out my son's little "wiener and scrotum" on the monitor. But see? Even a guy who had trouble saying 'penis' to a woman who was looking at a live image of one and who'd obviously had an encounter with one could still manage to say 'scrotum' without fainting, cracking up, or breaking into a lascivious dance.

Would that more public-school librarians were made of such stuff. Quoth a male school librarian in the NYT article linked above: “If I were a third- or fourth-grade teacher, I wouldn’t want to have to explain that.”

He could always do what my teachers did and send me to the dictionary to look it up. Unless we're not saying 'dictionary' now because, you know.

Another school librarian in the Times story explained her stance this way:

“I don’t want to start an issue about censorship,” she said. “But you won’t find men’s genitalia in quality literature.”

“At least not for children,” she added.

I'm glad she clarified that, although clearly this woman is unfamiliar with Jackie Collins' oeuvre and is not to be trusted to make these judgment calls. And it's not like the book is referring to a grown man's junk, either, or even a boy's. No, the scrotum in the book, the one causing all the panic and debate, is attached to a dog -- a dog who got snakebit on that particular part.

Do you know what I find shocking and scandalous about all of this? That any, let alone many, of the public-school children of our nation are being guided by full-grown adults who are freaked out by dog balls. I weep for my country and its countless, nameless scrota.