The controversy, which arose in the biblioblogosphere over a thread on LM_NET over the children’s novel’s use of the word “scrotum,” escalated after the February 15 Publishers Weekly ran a story about the debate. In the novel’s page-one anecdote, 10-year-old title character Lucky overhears a meeting of a 12-step addiction-recovery program at which a man recounts how his dog got bitten by a rattlesnake. PW told how LM_NET subscriber and teacher/librarian Dana Nilsson of Sunnyside Elementary School in Durango, Colorado, had reported to fellow list members that 24 out of 25 respondents to her query agreed with her that the use of the word was age-inappropriate and that their schools would not buy the book.
That same day, PW published Lucky author Susan Patron’s response. A juvenile-materials collection development manager for Los Angeles Public Library, Patron said she “would not talk down” to her readers, adding, “To figure out the world, children have to unscramble a mishmash of secrets, clues, overheard tidbits, half-truths, out-of-context information, and their own observations. The lucky ones . . . have access to parents or teachers or librarians who will answer their questions.”
By mid-February, media specialists were reacting to headlines published as far away as Australia that proclaimed the prudishness of U.S. school librarians, apparently basing the assertion on the erroneous New York Times claim that “some shocked school librarians . . . have pledged to ban the book from elementary schools.” Nilsson, among others, were quick to emphasize that the media had misrepresented their professional judgment, and that they would probably buy Lucky for their collections because of its Newbery imprimatur.
Also weighing in were Kathleen T. Horning and Cyndi Phillip, the respective presidents of two American Library Association divisions, the American Association for School Librarians and Association for Library Service to Children. They issued a joint statement February 22 affirming the profession’s commitment to “inclusion rather than exclusion” and praising The Higher Power of Lucky as “a gently humorous character study, as well as a blueprint for a self-examined life.”
Posted February 23, 2007.