Old Testament Apocrypha (the Septuagint/Catholic books)

[The Mikado]

As some know, the version of the Old Testament the Catholic Church uses includes extra books added during the translation to the Septuagint or the first translation of the Hebrew Bible from Hebrew into Greek in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE, which added a variety of books to the canon written 250-150 BCE that are not canonical to the modern Hebrew Bible nor Protestant Bibles that are based on it.  Even though St. Jerome himself was skeptical of these texts (and used the Hebrew whenever possible to compose his Latin version), he included the Apocrypha books in his Bible.  Luther and other Protestants removed the Apocrypha from their Old Testaments, usually putting them in a separate section between the Old and New Testaments labeled "Apocrypha."

These books include additional fragments to Daniel and Esther, as well as the books of Judith, Tobit, Esdras I and II, the "Wisdom of Solomon," (come on, the Old Testament already has 3 books traditionally ascribed to Solomon, did it need a fourth?), Ecclesiasticus (the Wisdom of ben Sira), Baruch, the Prayer of Manasseh, and the historically significant First and Second Books of Maccabees.

What significance should these Old Testament Apocrypha be granted?  The deuterocanonical status accorded to them by the Catholic Church (they're still canonical to the Bible, just...less so than the rest of it), the status of "Books of wisdom one might want to read, but not part of the Bible" that Protestants tend to give them, or just flat out ignoring them like is typically done outside of scholarly circles with the New Testament Apocrypha?

EDIT: As for me, the story of Judith is one of the coolest in the Bible, even if it is "Apocryphal."

[SmokingCricket]

From what I know, the NT Apocrypha are ignored because some of the stories do not jive well with the rest of the NT (young Jesus conjuring a bear to get revenge on kids who were picking on him for being a "bastard child" because he had "no father", young Jesus resurrecting a boy who he pushed off a cliff, Jesus getting married and having children, etc).

The OT Apocrypha help cover a fairly long gap in time between the OT and NT. From the parts of it I have read, it does not really seem to be out of line with the rest of the OT for anything other than date of writing, and even then it would not be too far off of some of the rewrites.

If it were me, I would have both the OT and NT Apocrypha added back in.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The NT apocrypha was never widely adopted as a whole as canonical. Some early communities considered some texts sacred, but it varied widely. Some were only written centuries after the NT canon became somewhat established. There was never a widely accepted canon that included them as their has been for the OT Apocrypha. Almost all churches, Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox, have the same NT books for over one and a half thousand years.
The OT apocrypha books, while more established, have varied also in their significance and acceptance. Some Eastern churches include other books such as the Prayer of Manasseh and 3 Maccabees along with those included by the Catholics.   
I generally give greater consideration to those books accepted as canonical across different traditions. I think these are the ones accepted as scripture by the Jews in the time of Jesus and by the earliest Christians given what the NT draws on, though there was probably some different opinions on this from the earliest times too.

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

The NT apocrypha is just a bunch of early fanfiction.
The OT apocrypha is a good source of intertestamental Jewish history, but not really "Scripture".