For those who have been following the children's product safety testing issue: Good news! The CPSC voted yesterday for a year-long stay of enforcement on testing requirements of this law. Here is a link to a draft version of this - it was in fact approved yesterday:
http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml09/09115.html The press release is at http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml09/09115.html.

The stay doesn't apply to a few things: cribs, pacifiers, surfaces with paint and other surface coatings, small parts for young children's products, and metal children's jewelry. Everything else does NOT have to test (although they still must comply with the new standards).

This means our books (and Lap Books) are SAFE, and my guess is that they'll never be required for testing, since books have never actually been a lead or phthalate hazard and the CPSC specifically mentions them in their discussion as something that they need to look at.

The surface coatings thing is interesting. It looks to me like that might affect toy and clothing design for a while if not permanently - I wonder what counts as a surface coating? I wonder if we'll see fewer printed and painted t-shirts marketed for kids in the next few seasons? It will certainly be more expensive if each design has to be separately tested, which is the current requirement.

Also, Jim DeMint (R-SC) has sponsored a bill to modify the CPSIA and make it much more reasonable. So it looks like things are getting much, much better.