In yet another study that will stun savvy parents into a deep stupor, it's been 'exposed' that plenty of book-fair products aren't actual, legible books but playthings and decorations related to books -- connected by the slickly effective marketing campaigns that made the Harry Potter series Scholastic's sustaining economic juggernaut. (Recall, too, recent reports linking recess with happier, better-behavedkids.) Any parent who has sent a child to a school book fair with pocket money knows that posters, fancy doodads that perch on pencil erasers and cute, possibly fuzzy, bookmarks too often trump books.

Why is it that what parents know, in bone-deep experience, becomes reportable news when studies confirm common sense? And what do you do, when your kid brings home a Garfield poster instead of Treasure Island? Do you think schools should restrict book fairs to books only, or does that glitzy, gauzy, shiny stuff actually lure young readers into literature?