@LouisRenault
And also:
Enid Blyton books are not good
I would disagree - I recently re-read the Faraway Tree and the Wishing Chair books, probably for the first time since I was the right age for them. I didn't appreciate, when I was six, just how original and imaginative they were. Some of the ideas in those books are as good as anything JKR came up with - though with less complex themes and no deaths, as they're aimed at younger children.
I agree. People are very dismissive of Enid Blyton, but try rereading them as an adult and there's far more to them than people think.
Yes there are issues with them, but no more than other books.
Famous Five: George is a very modern character for the times. She's mistaken for a boy simply because in those days girls didn't wear boys clothes etc. She's shown as keeping up with the boys-and even better in a lot of ways.
Anne is very brave. She's scared but still does most things. That's braver than the others who generally don't show fear-except sometimes Julian who is scared for the others rather than himself.
Dick is really the filler character in the group.
The Adventure series are far more threatening than I picked up as a child. There's one point where Bill says "don't worry Lucy Ann, they won't hurt children." As a child I excepted that. Rereading it to my children I could see that it was a desperate comment. They'd have killed the children off first to get him to talk. Plus you've got the development of the romance between Bill and Mrs Mannering.
In the Barney series you have Barney finding his father. And the cruel trick played on a desperate boy in Rub a Dub. Writing at its finest there.
And I could go on.
People say she's too middle class. Well actually she has a number of fantastic characters who are definitely working class. Barney, Andy (Adventurous four), Ern (Five Find Outers), Jack (Secret Series) and others. They're not looked down on at all, more admired. In fact it tends to be the upper class princes who come off worst from her writing!
People accuse her of being sexist. I suspect that hurt her because for her time she actually was quite ahead of the pack. And as a "girlie" girl, I appreciated having characters who did like dolls etc without being shown as being wrong.
Racist, yes, her attitudes are wrong by today's standards. I tended to use it as a learning curve for my children to show how times had changed, and how ingrained racism was back then. I expect there will be books today that are considered forward thinking that will be considered to be dreadfully offensive after 20 years, let alone 80 years later.
Her characterisation is excellent. Although she has similar characters in her main books, they are markedly different. You wouldn't confuse Anne with Bets or Lucy Ann, even though on the face of it they are the similar "little girl" character. Compare that to Noel Streatfield (whose books I also love) where you could interchange several of the characters in books and not notice.
She has an understanding of characters in a very complex way. They're often not just happy children having fun, they have backgrounds that cause their actions.
She does approach issues in her books. There is child abuse, hints of domestic abuse, parent illness, financial difficulties, loss of a pet, jealousy of siblings and many other things very sensitively with understanding about children.
And her imagination is amazing. The Faraway Tree and Wishing Chair books both have the most amazing lands that feel both dreamlike and real. The Land of Goodies with flowers where the middle are jellies for example.
She wrote over 700 books, many of which are still available today. That's pretty impressive. Can you think of any other author who wrote as many stories? How many authors from the 40s and 50s are still published today by mainstream publishers?
And another accusation thrown against her is the lack of language. I learnt all sorts of words from her: Forger, verbose, ornithologist, asinine, purloined, mutinous, ingots...
And I learnt about things like being insured (when a house is burnt down), and how to tell stalagmite and stalactite apart ("Stalactites must hold tight to the roof and stalagmites might join them one day if they grow tall enough) as well as lots about nature.