20 years. Right.

I've been following the CPSIA debacle pretty closely, thanks greatly to Deputy Headmistress over at The Common Room and a few others. The latest absurdity is that the commission claims that children's books have a useful life of 20 years. If, which is not specified, that means that a given copy might wear out after that much time, I can see an in-some-cases point. But just as the whole rest of this mess, nothing is spelled out as being so narrow.
The Headmistress' response was extremely well done, as always. She included a book called The Story of the Bible. This is a retelling of the Bible, as the name implies, but at an older reading level than the Children's Story Bible
by Catherine Vos. It was first printed before the turn of the twentieth century.
We have in our posession a copy of that book, which I think is the 1911 printing, that is the one and only thing I've ever seen, let alone that I have, that belonged to my great-grandfather John Towson. (This would have been Father's maternal grandfather.) It's beautiful, bound nicely, and a very good book for teaching Bible. Guess what: I fully intend to use it when Bluebonnet is older. We have my mother's copy of the Catherine Vos book, which we've been using for Bible since she was born (we're on our third read-through already). As a matter of fact, the 1950s Vos book is in less-pristine condition than the older one; evidently Mother et al used hers more. (A good problem to have with a book of Bible stories!)

Congress- have a reality check.

What I'll miss most after CPSIA

www.WhimsicalWalney.com has requested blog posts about the 5 things we'll miss now that the vile CPSIA is in place. Without further ado:

1. Old books. The out-of-print treasures of libraries. Carolyn Haywood and Lois Lenski are just two authors about to be unavailable.

2. Freedom not to have to make most of Bluebonnet's clothes. I can, and enjoy doing it, but I like to be able to do some of both. Now we'll mostly have to make things, buy only what we can't make, and do with intra-family handmedowns. (And most of those are starting to cross the line from handmedown to heirloom, since my cousins wore my clothes....)

3. Things made by other people that we could buy at craft shows.

4. Logic. This law killed most of it.

5. The freedom to pick and choose what things our family has.