My Gran used to read me Enid Blyton as a kid. I can't remember which story it was, but a criminal act had taken place to do with a car, where the "Three Golliwogs" were accused. So the policeman...threw all three Golliwogs in jail because, he "just couldn't tell them apart"??
If you think it's OK to read your children Enid Blyton, and think the controversy is just "a lot of fuss about nothing" you should perhaps reconsider. I still remember this story being read to me, and it's only now as an adult I can understand it's racist connotation. I know these stories are very much of the time. But this is exactly the kind of mentality older generations use, to make subtly racist comments. For it was "how they were brought up"
So, how you going to bring your kids up?
I think several of her books have been republished and updated to keep up with the progress since then.
"Dated attitudes and altered reprints
Cover of The Three Golliwogs, in which the golliwogs are the heroes.
The books are very much of their time, particularly the titles published in the 1950s. They present Britain's class system ? that is to say, "rough" versus "decent".[5] Many of Blyton's children's books similarly popularized negative stereotypes regarding gender, race, and class.
The most startling incidence of this type of material to a modern audience might be the use of a phrase like "black as a nigger with soot" appearing in Five Go off to Camp[6][7]. At the time, "Negro" was the standard formal term and "nigger" a relatively common colloquialism. This is one of the most obvious targets for alteration in modern reprints, along with the replacement of golliwogs with teddy bears or goblins. Some of these responses by publishers to contemporary attitudes on racial stereotypes has itself drawn criticism from those adults who view it as tampering with an important piece of the history of children's literature. The Druce book brings up the case of the The Little Black Doll (who wanted to be pink), which was turned on its head in a reprint. Also removed in deference to modern ethical attitudes are many casual references to slaves and to corporal punishment. Blyton's attitudes came under criticism during her working lifetime; a publisher rejected a story of hers in 1960, taking a negative literary view of it but also saying that "There is a faint but unattractive touch of old-fashioned xenophobia in the author's attitude to the thieves; they are 'foreign'...and this seems to be regarded as sufficient to explain their criminality."[8]
Similarly, some have suggested the depictions of boys and girls in her books was sexist. For example, this Guardian article suggested that the Famous Five depicts a power struggle between Julian, Dick and George(ina), with the female characters either acting like boys or being heavily put-upon. Although the issues are more subjective than with some of the racial issues, it has been suggested that a new edition of the book will "address" these issues through alterations, which has led to the expression of nostalgia for the books and their lack of political correctness.[9]. In the Secret Seven books, the girls are deliberately excluded from tasks such as investigating the villains' hideouts ? in Go Ahead, Secret Seven, it is directly stated "'Certainly not,' said Peter, sounding very grown-up all of a sudden. 'This is a man's job, exploring that coal-hole'".[10] In the Famous Five this is less often the case, but in Five On a Hike Together, Julian gives similar orders to George: "You may look like a boy and behave like a boy, but you're a girl all the same. And like it or not, girls have got to be taken care of."[11] Both of these involve situations that would in reality be dangerous for any child, and where clear gender roles are set out with boys in charge and girls protected, possibly sending out a message for more realistic scenarios."