I have always loved the poem Foreign Lands by Robert Louis Stevenson (see below). As a child, I could understand the rhyming yearning of the young protagonist, to “look abroad on foreign lands”. As my peripatetic life meandered about, I constantly came back to this poem, which captured the awe and wonder of discovery.
The book, A Child’s Garden of Verses, was one of those books that held magic, not only in charming verse, but because of the many beautiful illustrations that adorned its pages. Now, it seems, that these gems of years past, are “dangerous” to our children, because of the potential lead content of the various inks used to print pre-1985 books!
I was blissfully unaware of this until I read an article in City Journal, by Walter Olson, that states that
under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. Merchants, thrift stores, and booksellers may be at risk if they sell older volumes, or even give them away, without first subjecting them to testing—at prohibitive expense. Many used-book sellers, consignment stores, Goodwill outlets, and the like have accordingly begun to refuse new donations of pre-1985 volumes, yank existing ones off their shelves, and in some cases discard them en masse.
The culprit?
the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA), passed by Congress last summer after the panic over lead paint on toys from China. Among its other provisions, CPSIA imposed tough new limits on lead in any products intended for use by children aged 12 or under, and made those limits retroactive: that is, goods manufactured before the law passed cannot be sold on the used market (even in garage sales or on eBay) if they don’t conform.
I share Mr. Olson’s assessment:
Whatever the future of new media may hold, ours will be a poorer world if we begin to lose (or “sequester” from children) the millions of books published before our own era. They serve as a path into history, literature, and imagination for kids everywhere. They link the generations by enabling parents to pass on the stories and discoveries in which they delighted as children. Their illustrations open up worlds far removed from what kids are likely to see on the video or TV screen.
The potential for increasing child protection to include book banning is perturbing. There’s a lot of information of CPSIA at Mr. Olson’s blog, Overlawyered.
FOREIGN LANDS
Up into the cherry tree
Who should climb but little me?
I held the trunk with both my hands
And looked abroad on foreign lands.
I saw the next door garden lie,
Adorned with flowers, before my eye,
And many pleasant places more
That I had never seen before.
I saw the dimpling river pass
And be the sky’s blue looking-glass;
The dusty roads go up and down
With people tramping into town.
If I could find a higher tree
Farther and farther I should see,
To where the grown-up river slips
Into the sea among the ships.
To where the roads on either hand
Lead onward into fairy land,
Where all the children dine at five,
And all the playthings come alive.
Tags: Consumer protection, CPSIA, CPSIA and books, Memories