Where did that week go?!

I had plenty to spout off this week, but the week's over, practically spout free. It happens.

Wednesday my librarian friend Maureen and I had a little chat about banned books. She's the elementary school librarian here, I spend a few hours Wednesday mornings helping around the place, usually cataloging books, shelving, shelf reading... that sort of stuff (I LOVE it.) In January we finished a full inventory, hadn't been done ever as far as she knows. Whew! I chuckled as I held in my hands some of the books that *some* people would prefer kids never know about. Maureen LOVES all books, and those especially it seems, the books with *gasp* words kids shouldn't read. We had an Associate Principal a few years back who would have just as soon seen those books put away to avoid the controversy. Maureen responded that one book in her collection actually had the word FUCK in it, and if Tom could find it, he was welcome to take the book and keep it somewhere else. The book's still in the library, the VP is somewhere else. ;o)

Anyway, Wednesday I chuckled as I catalogued and barcoded the school's new copy of The Higher Power of Lucky, a book that's got some press in the past few weeks. Susan Patron, the award winning author and librarian used the anatomically correct term for a dog's nutsack and the old biddies and young up-tights started howling. That one word bought the book more national press, more name recognition, and more attraction among ten-year-old boys than the Newbury Award ever would have. I told Maureen if she hadn't already ordered the book, it would have been my pleasure to donate it.

When I was reading the news online later, I came across the story of three New York high school girls who were suspended for disobeying a direct order from the principal not to use a specific word in a dramatic reading. They were reading from The Vagina Monologues. Um, 'kay? They're supposed to call it "that spot down there that girls have and boys don't?"

Arm, leg, foot, neck, penis, vagina, scrotum. Call 'em what they are, folks, and get over it.