I've heard that more than once...
I personally find them quite clever, and definitely much better than most of the garbage that passes for children's literature these days-- although I will confess when I began reading them nearly a decade ago never in my wildest imagination would have imagined the cultural impact they would ultimately have. Regardless of anything else they tapped into the collective on an enormous scale. I, for one will not argue with that. At least it introduced the concepts of inductive and deductive reasoning, a healthy vocabulary, mythology, texture and --
oh my personal favorite: universal health care.
"I'm a one-eyed Mormon Democrat from conservative Arizona, and you can't have a higher handicap than that."
~The ever-great and fabulous Morris K. Udall.