Every year, the Newberry Medal is given to the best children's book written that year. Previous winners include "Johnny Tremain," "Island of the Blue Dolphins," "A Wrinkle in Time" and "Shiloh."
Over the years, the award has become synonymous with the highest caliber in school-age literature, and its winners have become staples in elementary and middle school classrooms. In fact, it's near impossible to go through twelve years of American schooling and never have any contact with a Newberry award-winning book.
This year, the award was given to "The Higher Power of Lucky" by Susan Patron. The book is about a young girl living in a small California town. Her mother has recently died, and she is having a difficult time coping with her new step-mother. This leads her to look for an outlet of expression, and she finds it by eavesdropping on her town's self-help 12-step programs.
The book sounds like pretty decent children's fare, where the protagonist learns about the dangers of eavesdropping, but more importantly, learns a vital lesson about trusting people while still believing in herself - an interesting read for a sixth grader. Harmless, right?
Wrong. The book has come under some serious and heavy scrutiny in the past month. It isn't because the book is immoral or is too racy or deals with adult themes. In fact, its critics can only find one flaw in the entire book, and it comes on page one: the word "scrotum." The word appears on the first page of the novel, as the main character is eavesdropping on a man describing how a rattlesnake bit his dog on its scrotum.
Teachers and librarians all over the country have been banning this book in its entirety just because of the use of one word. One teacher went so far as to call it a "Howard Stern-type shock treatment." And because of that shock-factor, the book is being denied to students just because it contains one word, despite its reputation and prestige in the literary community.
The word "scrotum" also appears in Webster's Dictionary, nestled somewhere in-between "scrimmage" and "scuba;" it's a wonder some uptight librarians haven't caught on to it yet and started pulling Webster's from the shelves.
If I were a sixth grade teacher reading the book in my classroom, my first thought would not be, "I should not expose the children and their innocent existences to such a filthy word." My first thought would be, "Jeez, I hope a rattlesnake never bites me on my scrotum."
That's the aim of books and stories like this; they don't want you to think about the vocabulary and word usage, they're written to help you reflect on your own personal experiences and frames of mind and help you better understand the world around you. And if you remove a book from a library, you kill the potential that it might have on expanding a student's literary consciousness.
As students, we have to be thankful that there aren't many people above us censoring the words, images and messages we receive. We have a choice as to what we want to read and what we want to watch, regardless of content, and that freedom of choice is what defines us as individuals.
The point is that books, especially those that are highly-regarded enough to win the Newberry Medal, are important learning tools and should not be taken away from students. Books shouldn't be banned just because they have one word that makes someone uncomfortable.
I probably would have enjoyed "The Giver" a lot more in eighth grade if it had included the word "scrotum."
Write to Paul at pjmetz@bsu.edu
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