If you don't care for children's literature the answer may not bother you.

But the battle in readers' affections between protagonists that are good, and those that are so bad they're also good, is just as questionable.

Where did the anti-hero come from? Is the traditional hero any different now?

And if children's stories tend to moralise, what type of character should we see fight their way between one page and the next?

Lecturer in children's literature at UWS Dianne Dickenson believes attempts to create heroic female characters has necessarily resulted in a rethinking of traditional heroic narratives — where heroism has mostly been associated with masculinity — and the attributes of the hero.

"Possibly there's been a shift away from, or a questioning of, the ideology of heroism and the values that had previously been taken for granted as being heroic," she said.

"There is a tendency to believe that readers are more likely to identify with 'more human' characters with all of their flaws — rather than with characters which appear to be above ordinary human beings."

But deciding the best of the breed is difficult due to a lack of distinction between hero and anti-hero, Ms Dickenson said.

"Many characters in children's books have both heroic and non-heroic characteristics.

"Even the most heroic characters often suffer self-doubt or have some weaknesses.

"The courage they show is more likely to be in evidence in their everyday acts of survival, challenge to authority or conformity, or their attempts to overcome their own inadequacies and the difficulties they encounter, rather than in grand heroic gestures," she said.

"Personally, I tend to like the more quirky characters who are not particularly heroic but to some extent have heroism thrust upon them through circumstances, such as the children in A Series of Unfortunate Events who must work together, to use and develop their distinctive talents to overcome their increasingly bizarre lives."