The “value added” books have been moving in, and there goes the neighborhood.
You know the kind. They’re from publishers gone astray, who’ve led authors and illustrators down the garden path of gimmickry. These books can dress up like a skank ho, with doodads pouring out of their shrink wrapping like muffin tops over low-rise jeans.
The hubby’s been bringing them home by the boxload, these floosies of the kidlit world, with their puzzles, blocks, charms, chalk and – lest we not forget – stacks of CDs. They tumble onto the kitchen table, bright and loud and clashing, clamoring for my children’s attention, whispering sour nothings with their awkward meter, near-miss rhymes or “activities” that occupy some time but few brain cells.
Apparently, reading isn’t enough. You have to distract kids from learning actual words with stuff that has little or no writing, because we all know the only symbol that really matters is the capital S with a vertical line through it, $ee?
Oh, sure, I come across many quaint, traditional stories with such outmoded “features” as character arcs, plots, metaphor, subtext and even big words. They’re the Bohemian literary types renting a fifth-floor walk-up and subsisting on Ramen Supreme while the Value Addeds make all the money and fret about being properly accessorized.
I have no statistics to back up my assertion the stuff is everywhere. But I can hear it. So much of it pings and rattles, clicks, clacks, rings, purrs and, mostly, breaks. The box should say: Some re-assembly required.
Somebody with marketing credentials could probably pinpoint how much worse it’s getting. I’m still subject to the vagaries of the slush pile. I glean at the fringes of whatever the editors at the LA Times wisely discard. I’ve learned (the hard way) to toss the movie tie-in books before Seth sees them, or I’m doomed to plot cliché hell.
But the Value Added stuff is tougher. Some of it’s too clunky to hide, doesn’t fit easily into the trash, or is made of materials too suspect to recycle. Plus the hubby lugged it all home, and the guilty-guilts creep up if I hand back half the box.
My anecdotal evidence is that, yes, the Value Added books -- if “books” is the right word for things that beep -- are becoming more ubiquitous and brazen. I’m not talking your standard lift-the-flap book, or scratch-n-sniff or touch-n-feel or snort-n-drool or whatever. Those books have been around since, well, I dunno. A long time, I suspect. Nor am I picking on Priddy, which produces a whole list of this stuff, most of it colorful and stylishly designed.
I’m talking about the charms that dangled from a series of classics: Black Beauty, Secret Garden, a few others. Charms. Cheap ones probably made from lead or spent nuclear fuel rods. The sort of girl who can be lured into reading a book because it dangles a bauble probably has a ton of them already. Baubles, that is, not books. And the sort of girl who loves reading classic children’s books is, I would guess, doing so for rewards other than cheesy graft made by Chinese prison laborers.
I’m talking about boxes of puzzles attached to paperbacks that were drearily written, like the writer was stuck with this stupid ol' Easy Reader while his luckier colleagues got the plumb assignments like translating complicated assembly instructions from Japanese into Pidgin.
I’m talking about books with magnets, books with gameboards, books with moving parts or pieces missing -- deliberately. As if I need children’s books that come pre-destroyed.
And I have heaps of them. I’ve been packing them into boxes for our Big Move next month, so I’ve run my fingers over the special padded, vinyl covers and then wedged the damn things in sideways anyway. I’ve sorted jumbled puzzle pieces, removed a few soggy ones from the baby’s sticky grip and taped the frigging boxes closed. The CDs required delicate surgery to pry them from skintight sleeves and then were placed in clearly labeled jewel cases.
This is too much organizing for a mortal Mom. I need a spa treatment. I need it now.
I need to curl up with a good book, one whose charms are in its pages and not dangling from its spine. The hussies.
I just discovered your blog...and this post is great! Don't forget to mention how hard these babies are to shelve (I used to work at a bookstore...never neat and always damaging the books next to them!)
Posted by: grace | July 16, 2006 at 08:23 PM
Excellent post, thank you, thank you. These are the sort of things I regift (I'm just a book-crazy home educating mother, not a bookseller or librarian, though my husband might quibble with that last one), though I feel guilty giving them to people's children I know and like, so I put them in the box I save for Santas Anonymous, sigh...
The only exception I've made is for a book with Lego, though that was really more like Lego with a manual, and thank heavens it even lives in the Lego tub.
Posted by: Becky | July 17, 2006 at 11:09 AM
Rockin' post, Anne!
Posted by: Kelly | July 17, 2006 at 11:47 AM
I don't know if you all can tell, but I felt pretty strongly about this. It's been getting much worse very quickly, hence my sense of alarm.
Grace: I didn't think of the shelving aspect. I kinda dump them in a pile, but I guess that's not an option for a bookstore ;-)
Becky: Don't feel badly about "re-gifting" (love the word). I do the same, or donate them, same as you. What else can you do? It seems a shame to toss them.
Kelly: *blush* Thanks.
Posted by: Anne | July 17, 2006 at 12:06 PM
But if I didn't bring 'em home, you wouldn't have known to write this post!
Posted by: brettdl | July 17, 2006 at 01:33 PM
I was wondering if this was increasing or if it was my imagination. I was over at the new Books-a-Million and sure enough there was a ton and I mean ton of junk like this. Something interesting I saw along the same lines came from the author Jane Yolen's journal....she writes during a visit to the UK that "Back at Harper they showed me the package they were working on: the paperback editions of the three HOW DO DINOS big books in a box with five wonderful plastic dinos." It seems publishers are even trying this with well respected and sure thing authors.
Posted by: PJ Librarian | July 19, 2006 at 05:55 PM
It smacks of desperation, doesn't it?
Posted by: Anne | July 19, 2006 at 06:07 PM
More books, not more toys--I agree! I found your post through the Carnival of Children's Literature--I've linked too.
Posted by: Mama Squirrel | July 23, 2006 at 04:42 PM
Many thanks! I'll be by to visit your blog very soon too.
Posted by: Anne | July 25, 2006 at 09:18 AM