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.
I have been hearing whispers going around about these kinds of bans on children's items, and it has been worrying me, because I am a thrifty mama who loves shopping consignment sales and thrift stores for baby clothes and toys. It didn't even occur to me that children's books would fall under this ban as well!!
This is a tragedy! Some of us have started discussing it on Twitter. We're asking, "What can we do?"
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