Fahrenheit 2/10

Forgive me for harping on the subject, but I feel as if my whole way of life is being systematically criminalized by our jackass federal government.  I mentioned the other day that the new CPSIA regulations would render my child's entire wardrobe illegal. Fine. It's all good. She doesn't go out much anyway. We'll just let her run around naked and turn the heat up until we can afford to pay retail for new clothes. Today, I peeled back the onion a few more layers and realized that books are included in this whole clusterf@*k as well.

Will libraries have to dump their entire catalog of kid's books and start from scratch? What will happen to my beloved bi-annual library book sale? Amazon is already considering that they may have to burn thousands of copies of brand new children's books that cannot be certified lead free. Here in the blogosphere everyone is up in arms, but where is the mainstream media on this one? Are we the only people who have noticed?

Before I had Violet I worked in a used bookstore, a Half-Price Bookstore to be exact. Aaron and I LOVE old books. We have hundreds of gently used picture books for our daughter. I rely on second hand stores to keep our family in new reading material. If I can't afford to buy books for MY kid, what's going to happen to less fortunate families? American kids are already in the hole educationally speaking. Making it more expensive to read is not going to save any kids from lead poisoning. In fact, kids in my ghetto neighborhood will just go back to eating the paint chips that fall off of their 100 year old rental shacks if they can't get lead from picture books. This is utter madness.

I urge you to write to your congress person, before the bonfire starts.