February 15, 2009
A Whole New Level of Filch
Filch didn’t like Hogwarts students very much. However, we know that he did seem to have a thing for Madame Pince. And as strict as she was, Madame Pince still wanted kids using the library. As does the American Library Association who is currently fighting what appears to be an Umbridge like move to ban libraries for kids under the age of 12. The reason seems to be a pretty bogus concern that ten year old children will put old books that contain lead in their mouths. This seems to be more Umbridge than Filch. Doris at Leaky has the full story.
Sash1113
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The CPSIA has a ton of problems that Congress never anticipated. This act would also put crafters and mom-n-pops out of business because they can’t afford the required amounts of lead testing. Luckily, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued a one-year stay on enforcement until February 10, 2010.
So, for the moment, libraries, etc are safe, but Congress needs to clean up this act. I’m all for making sure our product are lead free, but a vague, misinterpreted law is far worse than doing nothing at all.
Luna
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Your kiding me. This is like the first stepping stone on the trial of book bruning. Gosh, fight this!
Luna
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sorry, ment burning.
Maggie Medlin
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So what can we do to stop it??
Arielle
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Yeah, this is insane. I mean, who over the age of three attempts to eat books? I have a ten year old brother and eight year old sister, and I’m pretty sure they know paper isn’t for eating…
Doris Herrmann
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Maggie,
I’ve spoken with my representatives today, and tomorrow I’ve planned a phone conference with a representative of the American Library Association. When I have more information on what to do I’ll update my blog post on Leaky.
First, let your representatives know that you don’t want this to happen. Follow-up with a blog about this and tweet the heck out of this on Twitter. A good old “blog-in” where we’re all hitting the topic (and Google is hitting it while crawling our site) will get a little attention as well.
Finally, I want to see if there is a way we (as a community) could test our books ourselves. If we formed an army of testers, we could all spend a couple of Saturdays talking about our favorite novels and running the lead tests at the same time. (it’s super-easy to run these tests – I checked 5 books today myself)
Right now our books are still ours, but in one year, any young person 12 or under will be without access to a local library. While I love my library and hang out there weekly, I can always go to the book store if I really want a new or used book.
The kids who will be hurt the most by this are our children from economically disadvantaged families or those in rural areas who can’t make it to the local book store, or couldn’t afford to purchase a book once there.
If anyone has any other ideas please feel free to contact me, I’m open for suggestions.
We can’t sit on our Pride and Prejudices and let this happen!
Doris