Fahrenheit 451 made real

Check back at Overlawyered for many updates, links, and comments on this issue. Snopes got this one wrong.


























The new law that is causing so much turmoil and harm in the thrift store business is having unexpected consequences, and the worst of them is that children's books printed before 1985 "may be unlawful to sell or distribute." The heavy, clumsy hand of Big Brother, in a panicked response to the influx of lead-contaminated Chinese goods, has come down hard on children's books and businesses that sell them.

In spite of the fact that no one knows of a single instance of a child being harmed by handling a pre-1985 book, used book providers will be punished for selling or even giving away older books.

Libraries are worried, too, but are assuming the new law doesn't apply to their collections until they are told otherwise. Legally there's no reason for them to believe this, but the alternative would have a catastrophic effect on their collections. I've noticed that libraries often don't value the older, often out-of-print books in their collections and are all too willing to jettison them to make space for two dozen copies of the latest "Twilight" book. This will only further encourage them to weed older gems from their shelves. It also seems likely that the children's portion of your local library book sale may already be a goner. Thanks for protecting us, Uncle Sam.

I've excerpted a few paragraphs but the entire piece is worth the time. It covers the fact that the media have been silent about this threat to this huge class of books. (And we thought they were the champions of free expression and the enemy of 'book-banning' and 'censorship.')

City Journal
The New Book Banning

It’s hard to believe, but true: 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.

While lead poisoning from other sources, such as paint in old houses, remains a serious public health problem in some communities, no one seems to have been able to produce a single instance in which an American child has been made ill by the lead in old book illustrations—not surprisingly, since unlike poorly maintained wall paint, book pigments do not tend to flake off in large lead-laden chips for toddlers to put into their mouths.

A commenter at Etsy, the large handicrafts and vintage-goods site, observed how things worked at one store:

I just came back from my local thrift store with tears in my eyes! I watched as boxes and boxes of children’s books were thrown into the garbage! Today was the deadline and I just can’t believe it! Every book they had on the shelves prior to 1985 was destroyed! I managed to grab a 1967 edition of “The Outsiders” from the top of the box, but so many!

People who deal in children’s books for a livelihood now face unpleasant choices. Valerie Jacobsen of Clinton, Wisconsin, who owns a small used-book store and has sold over the Internet since 1995, commented at my blog, Overlawyered: “Our bookstore is the sole means of income for our family, and we currently have over 7,000 books catalogued. In our children’s department, 35 percent of our picture books and 65 percent of our chapter books were printed before 1985.” Jacobsen has contacted the CPSC and her congressional representatives for guidance, but to no avail. “We cannot simply discard a wealth of our culture’s nineteenth and twentieth children’s literature over this,” she writes. She remains defiant, if wary: “I was willing to resist the censorship of 1984 and the Fire Department of Fahrenheit 451 long before I became a bookseller, so I’d love to run a black market in quality children’s books—but at the same time it’s not like the CPSC has never destroyed a small, harmless company before.”

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. Could we really be on the verge of losing all of this? And if this is what government protection of our kids means, shouldn’t we be thinking instead about protecting our kids from the government?

This news is cause for grief among children, book lovers, entrepreneurs, and those who believe culture is worth preserving and passing on. Our large family loves to read and is devoted to children's literature. It's a kick in the stomach.

























Most recent posts here.