but I felt I should weigh in anyway; I was too busy to earlier.
Children's Book Stirs Battle With a Single Word
Of course it's stupid to ban an entire book (The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron)--especially a Newbery winner--because it mentions a dog's scrotum. But what concerns me is that the article is written to make it sound like all we librarians do are scan through books to find some pretence to keep them off the shelves and out of the hands of thinking individuals (which, oddly enough, does include children), when in truth the vast majority of librarians are far more on the other end of the spectrum, ready to fight to the death to defend intellectual freedom. My faith in the New York Times has never been that high--especially after the plagiarism scandal, but this did nothing to raise my opinion of the quality of writing, although I'm sure some of the reporters are quite excellent.
That's not saying that the book isn't being banned, and by librarians, no less. I'm not sure how much has been spurred by actual book challenges (when parents and other patrons insist on the removal of a book for a variety of reasons, often complicated by the fact that they either didn't read the book or object to something for very spurious reasons). There are some librarians on the public library services to young adults and children who did say they would remove it or not order it, despite the fact that they collect all the Newberys. I don't get that. But then, I'm not dealing with incensed patrons, either, so maybe it's not my place to judge.
Still, it seems terribly un-librarianlike. And I still wish the New York Times had published a more balanced article.
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