Dog Scrotum + Kids' Novel = Controversy

What's a dog's scrotum doing in an award-winning children's book? Getting bitten by a rattlesnake. Ouch.

Sammy told of the day when he had drunk half a gallon of rum listening to Johnny Cash all morning in his parked '62 Cadillac, then fallen out of the car when he saw a rattlesnake on the passenger seat biting his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.

That's a great fucking passage in any novel -- for kids or adults.

Naturally, the presence of the s-word is driving some librarians nuts and giving rise to some ballsy defenses on college campuses, in the alternative press, and in anti-censorship circles.

The New Yorker, which rarely makes me laugh, unless featuring a talking dog in a cartoon, positively runs with the idea of bad words in surprising places in kids' novels, to hysterical effect.

“The Lonely Little Moonbeam”

The lonely little moonbeam would sleep all day, and then wake up and shine all night long, to guide people on their way. But he was lonely, because people never looked up and smiled at him. They were too busy performing fellatio.

Reminds me of when I was 7 or 8 and read a Stephen King book on a winter vacation in Florida. The word pubic kept popping up in one scene, and I read it as public. And let me tell you, I had a hard time trying to figure out what public hair was. Eventually I did, though I wasn't scarred. I had a laugh instead.