Protecting Vintage Children's Books

Thanks to BoingBoing (once again!) I heard about a neat site called vintagechildrensbooksmykidloves.com.

Its creator is the mother of a young son. Each day, she posts images and a brief summary/review of a mid-20th century picture book. Looking through the posts on the site is like visiting old friends. A few favorites I saw right away were Cannonball Simp and The Big Orange Splot (shown above).

But even more important, she wrote about a crazy side-effect of some legislation that I hadn't heard about. In an effort to protect children from lead in toys, Congress passed a law recently requiring all sellers of children's toys and books to test them for lead content. This raised an immediate outcry from all the small companies that hand-craft toys from wood or cloth -- because they can't afford to test their toys. The idea of testing is premised on huge economies of scale that exist for mass-produced toys (which everyone imagines are "made in China").

What I hadn't realized was that the testing law also applies to books, including used books. The vintage books blogger reports that thrift stores have begun throwing old books into the trash, and that more knowledgeable reselllers are pulling them from the shelves and boxing them up in case the law is changed.

Basically, if the book is intended for a child to read, it can't be sold. If it's being sold to an adult collector, it's okay (there's an exemption in the bill).

Her post on this topic contained all the info needed to let your representatives know that they should support the bills that have been submitted to protect both small toymakers and vintage books.