These awful fairy books are effective. I believe that the inhalation of these books is a good thing, and it’s an important stage in reading development. They are effective exactly because they offer a predictable plot and structure. This allows kids to build their endurance, learn plot prediction, and systematically build their reading vocabulary. While insipid and nauseating to the adults, they serve a very solid purpose for kids learning to read.
I now refer to these books as "the gateway drug." My daughter loved them, devoured them, sometime three times in a row. When there were gaps in the series on the shelf in the library, she got over her visible fear of speaking up for herself to talk to the librarian to request missing ones from the library. Soon, she learned she could request books before they were published, and she’d get to be the first kid to read that book. She learned the joy of anticipating a crisp, new book, and she learned to talk to librarians.
My tolerance of these books only goes so far, of course. We have a large class of books that are now called "in your head only" books. Most Fairies, Junie B. Jones, Magic Treehouse, anything Classic Starts, and all Magic Schoolbus (they just don't read out loud well) all fall within this category. That’s ok, learning to read in your head is a great skill.
Shared books in our house must be for mutual enjoyment. We're weird and unreasonable parents in that way.
All this became clear to me one summer, about 2 years after my daughter’s major Rainbow Fairy reading jag:
Today DD spent 3 hours at day camp, 2 hours at the pool, an hour and change building marble runs with her brother, helped me make dinner, and logged 3 hours reading. Today she finished off Journey to the Center of the Earth, re-read a few fairy books, and started a Wolves of the Beyond book. She's got two more novels from the library she plans to read tomorrow, it looks like she took out a chemistry/elements book to reread, but she's already made it clear that she needs a trip to the library tomorrow. She's thinking geology books, or maybe something about the Civil War, plus the last of the Wolves series, and to see if the librarian has anything else set aside for her.
Yeah, we're well enough known at the library that children's librarians keep a pile of books aside for DD when they bump into something she'd like.
What started as me biting my tongue on yet her reading yet another Rainbow Magic book has become a love of stories, a love of the reading process, reading for information, a huge vocabulary (though oddly pronounced), and an enthusiasm for reading her favorite books to her brother. Yes, she still checks out Rainbow Magic books. I've made my peace with it.