It turns out that when the Association of American Publishers tried to catch a quick PR boost off the current problems in the toy world by reminding people that “one of childhood’s greatest delights never has to be recalled,” they’d forgotten a few bad apples. Running a search for “books” in the Consumer Product Safety Commission database, thanks to a tip from poet Jilly Dybka, reveals several cases of children’s books that have been recalled by their publishers. In 1995, for example, Chronicle Books had to take back two books, Fuzz & Fur and Splish Splash, which were bound with two plastic bolts that could’ve created a choking hazard if they’d become detached. Similar risks apply in many of the other cases cited, like the peelable plastic lamination on the back of the 2001 edition of Candlewick‘s Bunny My Honey.
But when I posed the question yesterday, I wasn’t even thinking of activity books with hazardous parts. What I had in mind was something more like Candle and Soap Making For Dummies, which Wiley had to recall in 2003 after discovering its recipe for lye reversed the instructions for combining sodium hydroxide and water, resulting in a burn hazard. Granted, it’s not a children’s book—but Scholastic‘s Soap Making for Kids also had to be pulled from shelves that year after one 6-year-old burned her hand when the tray mold included with the book leaked hot soap mix. So the moral of the story is, apparently, that kids shouldn’t be allowed to make soap. Which is probably for the best, since that can only lead to joining Fight Clubs.