If the "controversy" had stopped with the Publisher's Weekly bit, it would have been easily shrugged off. Unfortunately, what with all the concern over troop surges and military hospital failures and where oh God where on Your Green Earth shall Anna Nicole be buried, it was apparently a slow news week, and the scrotum controversy went national. The New York Times and Newsweek both picked up the story, leading to an explosion in scrotal related newspaper stories.

Many of the articles, like the original PW one, failed to mention the fact that the scrotum in question belonged to a dog. The New York Times article did have one woman insisting that this was yet another example of the "Howard Stern" effect on our country, where people just use nasty words for no reason but to upset good decent people. Comments like this always reveal more about the commenter than the commentated (like maybe they haven't read the book), but what bothered me more was the thought that the people who actually wrote the articles had not read the book. How else to explain the inclusion of quotes like "you won't find men's genitalia in quality literature" without any kind of fact-based alternative perspective? Either the reporters hadn't read the book (which isn't that long, people) or else the reporters were more interested in la scandale than the truth, and we know that never happens.

For most librarians I know, this sort of thing is just embarrassing, like having a family argument broadcast on America's Funniest Home Videos. Most librarians are not horrified by the word scrotum. Most librarians have had to clean much worse graffiti off of walls, books, and furniture. Most librarians have larger concerns, like the threat of local, state and federal legislators conspiring to keep us from offering any kind of useful computer services to our patrons, but that's a rant for another day.

In the midst of this controversy, a children's book catalog was accidentally delivered to my inbox. The back cover promoted several cheerful looking kids books, including one which instantly grabbed my attention. I hurried over to the librarian in charge of buying children's materials and begged her to add it to the collection. It's called Let's Look at Animal Bottoms, and features a full-color display of several elephant behinds on the cover.

Times like these I realize it's probably for the best that I never became a children's librarian. I feel I'm lacking some inherent diplomacy necessary to navigate the rocky shoals of children's lit. My impulse to a scandal like the one over The Higher Power of Lucky is to organize an All Animal Bottoms story time, featuring classic stories like The Truth About Poop and Walter the Farting Dog. No doubt the library would have some cranky parents on their hands, but I tell you what, if it were up to the kids, it would be a smash hit.