CPSIA and Vintage Books: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Law

I went to sleep with no coffee in the house and when I woke up there was still no coffee in the house and the garbagemen came before I could stick the smelly leftovers in the can and then I found an even stinkier new statement from the CPSC about books, and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

I think I'll move to Australia.

If you've ever read this childhood classic by Judith Viorst with expressive black and white line illustrations by Ray Cruz (Atheneum, 1972,), I'm sure you get my literary allusion. And if not, here's the first page as a teaser - you have got to read this book, which is still completely relevant and delightful 37 years after it was published. It's just as appealing to adults as it is to kids.

Copyright 1972, Judith Viorst and Ray Cruz

So here's why it was a THNGVB day. The CPSC put up some new "helpful" powerpoint slides for their staff today (you can read them all here).

Here's the line that's got me ready to move to Australia. Or, better yet, ready to make Congress move to Australia and let the country start fresh. Page 6 has the guidance on children's books (ordinary books safe if published after 1985, limited staff analysis has shown some lead in older books, blah, blah). And then this line:

Children’s books have limited useful life
(approx 20 years)

I had to read this statement about a dozen times before I could believe it really said this.

What planet do these people live on? Have they never heard of Winnie the Pooh? The Wizard of Oz? Peter Pan? Alice in Wonderland? Peter Rabbit? Charlotte and Wilbur? Mike Mulligan and Mary Ann? I could go on for quite a while.

Maybe, my son suggested, they were referring to the physical book, that volumes wear out after 20 years. Except that's equally asinine. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that there are millions of copies of children's books published and printed before 1989 that are still in excellent, completely useable condition, with content still just as capable of stirring the souls of children or tickling their funny bones or teaching them something interesting. Otherwise, there'd be no one out here making a stink about old books, but there are tons of us.

Well, maybe, said my Devil's Advocate, they were referring to library copies which can get some pretty tough wear and tear. True - but libraries are still sweating bullets about having to purge the pre-1985 books from their collections, which makes me think those old books are surviving at a pretty high rate. Doesn't surprise me, when you consider the industrial strength of some of those bindings and the fact that past the age of 2 or 3 kids start to treat their books with a little more respect.

In fact I recently finished reading a truly outstanding library book, Mine for Keeps, by Jean Little (Little, Brown, 1962) and although after 46 years the cover art looked faded, there weren't even any ripped pages or significant stains or anything else that would make this book unusable. And the content, about a girl with cerebral palsy who struggles to fit in at her local school after returning from a special boarding school was timeless and universal. I really cannot recommend a book more highly. I read it first when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade and when I rediscovered it I was overjoyed. What's really wonderful about this book is, despite my initial description, is that it's not so much about a girl and her disability as it is about the typical kid challenges faced by a girl who also just happens to have CP. That's an important distinction, and it's only part of what makes this book so great. (It's a great dog story too.)

Illustration copyright 1962, Lewis Parker

I'm now reading my way through all of Ms. Little's sensitive, moving books (thanks to the many amazon sellers who haven't yet been forced to remove their inexpensive non-collectible copies of vintage kids' books), including her memoirs, which I also strongly recommend. In the first volume, Little by Little, there is a hilarious scene in which Jean, who is blind from shortly past conception, subs for a last minute scratch in a championship college intramural basketball game. Today that scene would have been videotaped, become a viral youtube video and been re-broadcast on ESPN and all the morning talk shows.

No, the CPSC's completely ignorant statement is the equivalent of saying that we have no need of Rembrandt, Matisse, or da Vinci paintings since some perfectly nice ones have been made in the last 20 years. No need of Shakespeare, Jane Austen or Dickens when you can read John Grisham or Janet Evanovich (not that I have anything against those latter authors - fine beach reading. In fact, Grisham could write a pretty good thriller featuring an evil congressman in cahoots with the consumer lobbyists and aided by a nefarious CPSC enforcer as they pursue a beautiful crafter fleeing with his movie-star beautiful fiancee, the vintage bookseller.)

I had started a completely different post about the impact of CPSIA on literacy programs (I've been collecting info from several prominent ones), the economics of binding, and the research on the link between lead poisoning and exposure to books and educational toys (which I have a feeling will surprise Congress). But I'll save it for tomorrow.

Let this sink in meanwhile: Mary Poppins: irrelevant. Pippi Longstocking: useless. Babar, Ferdinand, Curious George, Frances, Corduroy, Harriet the Spy, the Very Hungry Caterpillar, Madeline, the Borrowers, Little Tim, the Runaway Bunny, Max in his wolf suit, Horton and the Whos, the Grinch, Sam-I-Am, Amelia Bedelia: who needs them?

Now this book above you might argue is an example of why a children's book is "useless" after 20, well, more like 40-some years. As you can see from the cover, this volume has had a long, rough life. The Trolley Car Family by Eleanor Clymer (David McKay, 1947 - my copy is from the late 50s or early 60s) was one of the many books in my family's collection of "bathtub books." The house we moved into when I was 10 had a huge claw-footed bathtub on the third floor, and my sisters and I spent substantial chunks of our moody teens in it reading and re-reading our favorite childhood books. But even though this book's cover is rather the worse for the wear and it's a bit wrinkled from too much hot water and Calgon, it still has all its pages. Twenty years after its bathtub duty, my own kids enjoyed sharing the old-fashioned adventures of the family who was forced to move into the trolley car their dad drove until the trolleys were replaced by more modern buses, Pa lost his job, and the family was forced out of their home.

Come to think of it, a story about job loss, home foreclosure and useful things deemed obsolete doesn't sound so old-fashioned these days, does it?