Prevent iTunes 12.6.5.3 from attempting to update specific apps

I use iTunes 12.6.5.3 to sync my devices. With a couple of kids in our household trying new game apps roughly every day, the number of apps I have downloaded into my computer is rather large, and I'm OK with that, even though it means that every day I have to update a number of apps that reaches into the double-digits.

My problem is that iTunes attempts to update (or download) some particular apps that it apparently cannot update/download. Specifically, I am encountering the following error message when I attempt to update my apps and iTunes attempts to update the Apple Books app, or when I download the Apple Podcasts app as a new purchase:

Unlike other situations where there have been account problems that blocked all apps from updating, this problem only occurs with the specific apps I have identified: no other apps have any problems. But since iTunes blocks until this message box is cleared, nothing else is happening in the background.

I can accept that these apps are not going to download or update in iTunes. But if I cannot download or update these apps in iTunes, I would like to prevent iTunes from even trying to download or update these apps. Since it is a pain to selectively pick which apps to update (and it is often hard to spot these particular apps in the overall list), I would prefer if I could simply tell iTunes to not even try downloading or updating these apps. So, does anyone know if there a way to tell iTunes to skip these apps when downloading or updating?

By the way, I use iTunes 12.6.5.3, as that was the last version that supported syncing books and some other media types (before Apple streamlined what was supported in a sync), so an upgrade to a new version of iTunes is out of the question.

Thanks in advance.

Ariel