Customer Reviews

Mary Poppins in the Park

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When adults forget their childhood pals, daydreamers make foolish wishes and the wind blows unusually strong, it always leads to something quite out of the ordinary -- that is, whenever Mary Poppins is around.

In this, the final Mary Poppins book that P.L. Travers gave us before her death at age 90, we share the five Banks' childrens' adventures. Besides Jane and Michael, who were in the classic Disney movie, there are also toddler twins John and Barbara and infant Annabel.

A big departure from the Disney flick is Mary Poppins herself. Here, she is not the smiling, syrupy sweet nanny that young Julie Andrews portrayed; rather, the book's title character is strict, stern, often sarcastic and very taken with herself. Her strong personality makes her a unique storybook character and readers will find this Mary Poppins more of an enigma. Which, frankly, makes for better stories.

Everything in this book is G-rated but not preachy. Travers gives her young readers many fascinating, but never frightening, fantasy situations. Or are they real? Jane and Michael can never quite tell. The lines between what's real and what's not always blur around Mary Poppins.

This book is a series of unrelated chapters, self-contained stories, all dealing with the same main characters. Nothing is ever as it seems in the nursery of No. 17 Cherry Tree Lane -- or in the nearby park.

On a hot summer's day, Mary Poppins tells the children a tale of a hobo who was an angel in disguise, shedding his rags and growing wings as he flies away.

In another chapter, Michael, upset that he's caught a cold, finds that some days when everything seems to be going all right, it's actually going all wrong. He's taught a valuable lesson on a planet full of cats.

Later in the book, the children find messages on falling leaves. And witness a delightful, but not frightening, Halloween shadow dance in the park.

The nanny's magical cousin, Mr. Mo, is introduced. Jane finds the little toy figures she's created and destroyed do have lives of their own.

Around Mary Poppins, adults -- including favorites such as Admiral Boom, Miss Lark and her two dogs Andrew and Willoughby, the Bird Woman and Bert -- are caught off balance. Zookeepers, policemen and taxi drivers react to a flurry of frenzied events. Characters pop out of storybooks, out of Jane's mind, and off ceramic bookends. Lions and unicorns and even Indian chiefs prance through the park.

We are taken to worlds that exist between the blades of grass in the lawn, and up in the sky, to where felines and children disappear. There are traffic snarls, wedding breakfasts and birthday parties. And through it all, stalks Mary Poppins, with not a hair out of place. In very short order, characters get what they deserve, if not what they expect, and things are set right.

How does she do it? No one knows. Mary Poppins, you see, never, ever explains. But, she always entertains. Have some fun in the park with this magical nanny.

I enjoyed MARY POPPINS IN THE PARK, but this book is more like an "extras" rather than a complete book.

There are a collection of stories and magical happenings that surround Mary Poppins and the Banks kids, and of course they all take place in the park.

The stories and illustrations are still charming and I really like that in the beginning of the book there's a two-page spread showing an illustrative map of Cherry Tree Lane, the park, and the various locations that were used in the stories including Number 17, Miss Lark's house and Admiral Boom's, and Neleus the statue. And there's a personal note from author P.L. Travers that explains this book.

Another good book for bedtime stories.

I can't understand people reading a children's book as an adult and dissecting it for character development. This is what it is, a children's book. This is not adult fiction so don't apply adult rules to a children's book. This was my favorite children's book. It will appeal more to girls than boys. Travers had such wonderful imagination and wrote so delightfully. I couldn't wait to pick up another book and see what would happen next. I am sorry that there were not many more books. This is the book the movie was based on. The movie was only partially true to the books. The movie is wonderful in it's own way. I loved the movie, but I prefer the books. Many adults react to Mary Poppins negatively but I see Mary Poppins as a reflection of the time in which the author grew up. Mind you that many years later as a child reading this book I didn't care about those things. However some will find it dated and therefore miss out on a real gem. 50 years from now Harry Potter will be dated too but no less engaging. I fell in love with the adventures that whirled around Mary Poppins and the delightful way Travers told a tale. Who but Travers could dream up Uncle Arthur and his tea party or that wonderful chalk picture adventure? Aunt Corrie and her daughters and the gingerbread stars and the birthday and the twins story did not make it into the movie but are as enchanting a tale as you could wish. My favorite story of all is not in this book but another and that is the story of Jane and the China plate. As an adult I just reread this book and all the good feelings this book engendered from my childhood came rushing back. This is for a younger child than Harry Potter's books so I can't compare them. I am just grateful that Walt Disney's daughter was as infatuated with these books as I was. Disney recognized that this could translate into box office success. It was the highest grossing movie Walt produced to that date. The boon of the movie is to keep these books alive in people's consciousness so that the book might survive for other generations to fall under the spell of Mary Poppins.

I am so happy to add this book to my collection. I loved the Mary Poppins series as a young girl and hope my grandchildre will love them as well. Thank you Amazon for giving me the opportunity to find this great seller and thank them for their super service!

This was really a great choice for my granddaughter at Christmas..now she is able to enjoy reading a story I enjoyed when I was her age.

The Mary Poppins books have delighted multiple generations, but P.L. Travers does have her detractors. While Mary Poppins is arguably one of the greatest juvenile-literature characters of the 20th century, more engaging and unique than any of the main characters in the Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings and Wizard of Oz series, the books themselves are put together rather poorly, and have little flow or character development.

Although the three Mary Poppins novels (Marry Poppins, Marry Poppins Comes Back, Marry Poppins Opens the Door) each present a story that takes place over a certain period of time, the characters basically remain the same as they were five minutes after Mary Poppins arrives, and the novels are more or less series of marginally-related and somewhat-repetitive adventures. Mary Poppins in the Park epitomizes those weaknesses.

Throughout the series, most of the magical adventures take place at night; at a magical place or business that disappears after the escapade is over; or at the park. The stories that take place outside the Banks house follow the same formula. The children pay some sort of fee: a pin (as some say, representative of the prick of a syringe), sticking a threepence on the gingerbread woman's coat, a wish, the dropped shilling in the "Lucky Thursday" story, or "Feed the Birds! Twopence a bag!" The children then meet a special character, often related to a book or item from the nursery (again, perhaps representative of a drug-fueled obsession over an everyday object). There is a moral message in each story, and that message and its effect on the children's lives is what continues to make the stories memorable, even in a less-than-stellar outing like Mary Poppins in the Park. The children often walk away with a special token of their journey to remind them that it really happened, but Mary Poppins always insists that it doesn't. Sometimes, the entire incident is forgotten by everyone involved.

Mary Poppins in the Park consists of six short stories of various literary quality. A couple of them simply aren't good, going on forever like a bad Saturday Night Live skit. Sure, it's John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, but they're just buzzing around, acting like bees. There's also a critical lack of Mary Poppins and her magic in the stories. There's too much focus on Michael and Jane, and the situations they get in. Moreover, instead of a variety of supporting characters, the Park Keeper - one of the more uninteresting and prosaic minor characters in the series - appears in every story, telling people not to litter or disobey the rules of the park, and generally playing a pedestrian straight-man to unicorns, Lilliputians and Mary Poppins's icy stares.

While Mary Poppins in the Park lacks the joy of Mary Poppins's arrival and the despair of her departure that were featured in its three predecessors, it climaxes in the usual magical celebration of the last chapter, "Hallowe'en." This story, along with "The Faithful Friends," almost makes up for the rest of the book's difficulties. The mystery of the Bird Woman is examined, and a number of other characters make their return. While "Hallowe'en" isn't the best story in the book, it provides a much-needed connection to the rest of the Mary Poppins franchise. An unfortunate aspect of the story is a racially insensitive comment Mary Poppins makes, chastising the children for looking unkept, like "golliwogs." This, combined with the racial stereotypes of the original version of the "Bad Tuesday" chapter of Mary Poppins, has caused some libraries to stop stocking the Mary Poppins books, which is a shame, since they are an enjoyable and memorable contribution to English children's literature.