You know the kind. They’re from publishers gone astray, who’ve led kidlit authors down the garden path of gimmickry. These books are more tease than text, with doodads pouring out of their shrink wrapping like muffin tops over low-rise jeans.

The Big Houses are the most promiscuous, as you might expect, in fudging the centuries-old definition of “book” with puzzles, blocks, charms, chalk and – lest we forget – stacks of CDs. They arrive unsolicited by the carton, bright and loud and clashing, clamoring for my children’s attention, screeching sour notes with their awkward meter, near-miss rhymes or “activities” that occupy some time but few brain cells.

My favorite independent publishers aren’t immune – and you know who you are. Though when I sat down to make a list of what I’d gotten recently and from whom, I discovered to my pleasant surprise that the most memorable “value addeds” were from the independent houses. There was a Mozart CD and a build-it-yourself-microphone that briefly bobbed to the Top of the Tots list at our home.

But when did reading stop being enough? You have to distract kids from learning actual words with book-like-thingamabobs because the symbol that really matters is the capital S with a vertical line through it, $ee? Sorry to sound cynical. It seems to be a part of a parent’s job description.

Sure, I come across many quaint, traditional stories with such outmoded “features” as character arcs, plots, metaphor, subtext and even big words. Give me Candlewick or Peachtree or Barefoot Books or Kane/Miller or geeky Sylvan Dell. 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 do know that I usually throw away brochures and even whole catalogs from the Big Houses listing licensed characters and movie tie-ins and whatnot. Occasionally, this stuff arrives anyway, and I have to toss it or give it away—quick—before my kids spot it and 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.

My anecdotal evidence is that, yes, the Value Added books—and I use the term “books” loosely—are becoming more ubiquitous and brazen. I’m not talking your standard lift-the-flap 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.

A Humongous House once sent a full set of classic books with tiny dangly charms off the spine: Black Beauty, Secret Garden, a few others. We’re talking cheap, easily ingested, vacuum-clogging doodads 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 to translate 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.

Odd thing is, I don’t spot these books in bookstores, where the printed word still rules, but I do see them in toy stores from time to time. That’s fine for Cranium or Chronicle, with its brilliant, well-designed SmartLab line. But then I see smart parents buying smart toys and dumb books, which seems a pity and winds up wasting space in the landfill.

I can also give a little ground on the subject of CDs, which I see nearly all the publishers doing. For a biography of Mozart from North-South Books, a CD was indispensable, but another publisher sent one of bird songs that was fatally scratched. Now the CDs in my house are subjected to delicate surgery to pry them from skintight sleeves and place them in clearly labeled jewel cases—entirely too much work for one harried Mom.

I’m not a Luddite, truly. I embrace any technology that drives production costs down and makes all kinds of publishing innovations possible. But can I ask on behalf of my kids, their friends, their teachers and other busy parents that there be some motive for the onslaught of Value Addeds other than desperation?

For example, I recently had dinner with Sondra LaBrie, marketing guru for Kane/Miller, which reprints foreign picture books. She proudly described her house’s commitment to its backlist.

“Some of these books have been around longer than I’ve been there,” she said.

For books to hang around several years after their artificially imposed “sell by” date, you can bet their charms are found in their pages, not dangling from their spines.

Posted by: Anne Boles Levy