Fahrenheit 451 cover courtesy of amazon.com

If you’ve read Ray Bradbury‘s brilliant ‘Fahrenheit 451‘, you probably still have visions in your head of homes being destroyed because they dared to have books inside them. I know I do. That’s why an entry at bookshopblog really disturbed me. In their post, ‘Book burning on Feb. 10th 2009 due to CPSIA‘, they claim that according to new CPSIA laws, a book store or library can not sell or distribute items that do not have a certificate stating that they have been tested and proclaimed lead-free. Furthermore, this law is retroactive, meaning that even if the item was published fifty years ago, if it hasn’t been tested, you can’t distribute it!

What Does This Mean?

This means that you can’t trust anything. Even books. Destroy everything you own! (Not really, calm down and keep reading.)

I found another bit of reporting over at kreelanwarrior.com. In the post ‘Lead In Books – Another Reason To Get An Amazon Kindle‘, Michael R. Hicks makes the point that all this talk of lead in books should push everyone to buy an Amazon Kindle. He was immediately rebuked by his readers, who told him that books were lead-free. He posted a correction on the blog, but kept the entry there to preserve the discussion.

There’s a lot of information and misinformation out there concerning this topic. Just scan the folks talking about this at twitter!

Bottom line that I’ve discerned from all of this? 

Books are safe. Give them to your kids. Read them to your kids. Talk about them with your kids. They need books to awaken their imagination!

While I’m on the subject of books, there’s a great organization co-founded by Jimmy Gownley that I’d like to give a shout out to. It’s called Kids Love Comics, and they promote literacy through comics and sequential art. I remember comics being a huge part of my life growing up. (Who am I kiddin, they’re a huge part NOW!) They increased my vocabulary and got the creative juices flowing. When I did (do) pick up a novel or some other book without pictures, I could often imagine the art that would be in the comic version even more so than I could see the film. So to hear that there is actually an organization that promotes such things, all I can say is bravo! And. Let’s not let Fahrenheit 451 happen to us!