Wednesday afternoon in Westwood Village near the UCLA campus I picked up a copy of The Onion, that delightful satirical newspaper founded in Madison, Wisconsin nearly twenty years ago. A headline on the front page grabbed my attention: “Child-Safety Experts Call For Restrictions On Childhood Imagination.”

I immediately connected this to the scorched earth legislative proposals intended to protect children from Internet predators by radically restricting youngsters' access to social networking Web sites. Stifling creative young imaginations isn't the intent of these laws, but that would be their collateral damage to kids. This tongue-in-cheek Onion article advises parents to educate their children about the hazards of exercising their young imaginations. So, like the best satire, it offers a kernel of truth. The danger is not in the childrens' imaginations but in the twisted misrepresentations of online predators. And that is something parents should educate their children about.

And speaking of protecting children from their imaginations–nothing can stimulate anyone's imagination, regardless of age, as much as a good book. Maybe that is the real motive behind the controversy about Susan Patron's Newbery Award-winning book, The Higher Power of Lucky. Perhaps concern expressed about the presence of the word “scrotum” in the book is merely a fig leaf covering its critics' true concern. If they can keep the book out of kids' hands, the book cannot stimulate kids' imaginations. So, if the kids hear about the controversy, that will stimulate their imaginations and curiosity about “that word,” a word that to Lucky, the book's young main character, sounds “like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much.” Wouldn't it be fascinating to find out what it sounds like to kids who don't have the opportunity to enjoy the book? Lucky herself “could never ask about the story of Roy, since she had overheard it. If she asked about Roy, then he [Short Sammy] would know she had been eavesdropping at the anonymous twelve-step meetings” alcoholics, gamblers, overeaters, and smokers held on different days on the patio of the Found Object and Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center in Hard Pan, California. Surely some kids have overheard adults discussing the controversy and heard “that word” said in a way that has inspired them to come up with their own ideas about what it means. But were they to ask what the word means, they would out themselves as eavesdroppers.

Hard Pan's Found Object and Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center, mentioned in the book's second sentence, should be enough to stimulate any reader's imagination and make him/her eager to read on. Of course, then the reader will encounter “that word” in the second paragraph and would want to read on to find out how Roy, Short Sammy's dog, fared after being bitten by a snake. (Roy vanquishes the attacker and Short Sammy's wife gets him to the vet in time to save him.) The Onion may be on to something–maybe childhood imagination can be dangerous!

I have read only the first chapter of The Higher Power of Lucky and am looking forward to getting to know Lucky, the colorful characters of Hard Pan, why Lucky has a French guardian named Brigette, and more.