Of scrotums & librarians

I am so glad to be moving out of Kentucky. I know that stupid, small-minded people are everywhere, but Kentucky seems to have quite their share. One of which is a local Louisville librarian named Wendy Stolls who is one of the librarians who has chosen not to stock a Newberry Award winning book called The Higher Power of Lucky because it includes the word scrotum (but not even a person's scrotum...it is a dog that gets bit by a snake).

The discussion has been going on about this in the local MidSouth SCBWI list, but also on blogs all over (like Neil Gaiman's).

I am just disgusted. It's bad enough that books are challenged for stupid reasons (I mean, come on -- just using the word scrotum??) but for librarians to be censoring books because they are too scared to actually teach children is just...AGH. The most common reasoning from those who aren't stocking it? Something along the lines of "Geez, I don't want to be the one to explain what that is to a kid!"

Excuse me, but isn't teaching children part of your job if you are a teacher or librarian? Isn't that exactly the thing you are supposed to be doing?? There's nothing dirty about body parts. But there is something wrong with librarians who don't want to teach kids and who effectively censor books.

Just another thing that makes me glad to be moving out of the state.