Customer Reviews

Mary Poppins (Lythway Large Print Children's Series)

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have to admit that I cannot completely explain the attraction of Pamela Travers' tale of Mary Poppins, nanny extraordinaire. But 48 years later, and Julie Andrews notwithstanding, I still found myself nodding and smiling as I read the book. Strange things just happen around Mary. You can wander into paintings and travel the world with a magic compass. Laughter makes you fly and the animals in the zoo will celebrate your birthday if you're nice. All at Mary Poppins' whimsy.

Growing up in the U.S., with no concept of what a nanny was, I still loved her right away. What is odd about this is that she actually isn't all that likable. She is quite vain and very, very bossy. She says 'no' a lot, and rarely stops to explain herself or reveal her secrets. Yet somehow you know that she will never let you down and she always will do what she says. Young Jane and Michael (and the even younger twins) couldn't ask for a better guide and protector. In a family where the father is most often at work 'in the city' and the mother is loving but a trifle inept, Mary is the glue that keeps things working together.

The book is actually a series of short tales of a fantastical nature. Sometimes the tale contains the requisite grain of wisdom and sometimes it is just silly fun. Perhaps the willingness to be light hearted is what charms young listeners. In addition to those already mentioned, there is the tale of the dancing cow, and a touching explanation of why we cannot talk to birds. Even though the book is quite readable for an 8 or nine year old, it is really best for being read to children. The adventures should be appealing to almost any child and the pen and ink sketches are a delight to look at.

If you are considering buying a reprint edition, there is, another reason why the book is best read out loud by a parent. In 1934, when the it was originally published, a certain amount of cultural insensitivity was common, and while it did harm, it was not really intended to. In one story, 'Bad Tuesday,' the children travel the world to meet Eskimos, Chinese, Native Americans and Blacks. While all these people are stereotyped, the description of the Black Africans is atrocious. People of color will find it quite offensive. Thanks heavens, in the Odyssey Classics edition this has been remedied. It is the latter I recommend.

It is a relief that there are publishers who understand the value of a wonderful story and will take the appropriate steps to keep it accessible. Mary Poppins teaches us all that wonder lies behind even the most mundane things. I expect I will be right there with Michael and Jane waiting for our magical nanny to return.

Who WAS Mary Poppins, anyway? Well, as one who grew up with P.L. Travers' fabulous books, I can tell you who she was not. She did not give medicine with a spoonful of sugar, she was not a nauseatingly sweet airhead with an umbrella, and--guess what--she was NOT A NICE PERSON!

Which is exactly why I and my friends loved her. Other reviewers have found all kinds of hidden meanings, from satanism to British racism, to describe this and the other Mary Poppins books, probably because of the shock of finding that the real thing has so much more depth than the sickening movie version.

As a child in the 50s, I had no notion of British sensibilities or history, no clue about so-called satanism, and my sweet little child mind was ripe for all kinds of dire cult messages. But somehow, what I gleaned from these books was the best kind of adventure: an adult who wasn't really a parent, wasn't really a teacher, was definitely in charge--and yet strange magical things constantly happened in her presence. There were lessons to be learned: if Jane and Michael, the older children, misbehaved, the magic went awry. Badly awry. There was danger. There were consequences to their actions. Have a tantrum, and you just might wind up on the wrong end of an antique plate--trapped inside with no way out. Be rude to adults and other children, and your nice little world will change in ways you don't want to know about. But always, in the end, Mary Poppins was there to save the day without saying "I told you so." She was what so many modern children sorely lack: a strong parent figure. There was no spoiling, no giving in to whining demands (who would dare whine at Mary Poppins anyway?), and no indulgence. But there was also love and protection and security.

Is it wrong to expose today's children to literature such as this that may be politically incorrect? That is a debate that is larger than this review. I can only say from experience that even as a child, I took these books for what they were: fiction. And I loved them. Give me my nasty, vain, pompous REAL Mary Poppins any day of the week. In my view, she wears well. Very, very, well.

The Mary Poppins of the sticky-sweet Disney film and the Mary Poppins of the Travers novel are two entirely different characters, and the book presents us with a terse, demanding, and sharp-spoken nanny whose advetures satirize British sensibilities of the early 20th Century. In earlier decades, this would have made the book as much fun for adults as for children, but the passage of time has not been entirely kind to the novel: adults with little background in earlier British culture may easily miss the sharp wit and children raised on the tooth-rotting Disney film will probably be disappointed by the book's depiction of Mary herself. Parents who are willing to make the extra effort, however, will find it an extremely good opportunity for conversation with their children, for the various stories it contains (it is written in a very episodic way) will require plenty of commentary and explanation.

A surprising number of reviews accuse the novel of having paganistic, even satanic overtones. I myself consider this a matter of people finding what they look for rather than actually arising from anything in the novel itself.

Mary Poppins is a book about a family in the stifling "well mannered" hypocritical and malicious London suburbs of the 1930's. Kids who can understand Winnie the Pooh can understand the premises and get the ideas or at least enjoy the surprise adventures. It's a British middle class classic from the time of The Secret Garden, but it's much subtler. It's on the way to the classics of Dahl. Travers seems to me related, in her view of childhood, to such writers as Bertrand Russell and Virginia Woolf.

This family (Mr. and Mrs. Banks) is represented by varying degrees of imagination, and the parents even more than the servants are a dead loss. But the outside world includes some people who fire up the children, even just by their strangeness. The nanny, the queen of their lives, whom one cannot really understand, must be somehow made to fulfill the needs of the children. Because she is really there, close and intimate, and is quite sensible with them, her disapproval does not mean rejection. And in fact she likes them better than she likes their parents. For them she becomes a magician who produces wondrous adventures. Now and then Travers has her levitate--she's definitely a good witch.

Travers' basic point, if you read her as an adult, is that children know how to invest with magic both the strange and the everyday, drunkenness and snobbery, tyranny, poverty, wealth, and the nonsense they are told about the big world. Her inspiring conviction, the one that really inspires her and us, is that somehow the childhood power of feeling excitement and trust, which are expressed by the imagination, redeems us.

I bet most Americans over fifty, if they read it before 1970, remember it lovingly. Most of us who enjoyed the book want to pass on the classic children's book. We want to read it to our grandchildren.

But I will skip the chapter called "Bad Tuesday." The children visit the four directions of the compass and, like true children of the center of the world, fly in the four directions of the compass. There they meet friendly but absolutely stereotyped Eskimos in the North and Asians in the East and, in the south, a black family who are just as friendly and just as much from an old British picture book In a grass hut in Africa, they speak something that uses "Ah" for "I." Aunt Jemima as the English saw her.

This story, interestingly segues into, and actually seems to cause the events of "Bad Tuesday," when evil swells and erupts like a heavy hot thing in the very body of [five year] old Michael. He is rude and wicked, and he can't feel sorry. He enjoys upsetting people. We might say he manifests all day a furious disregard for the feelings of others. It is like anger, but it is not only anger. Can he be reacting to the destiny of belonging to the master race? That night he has a nightmare of the four peoples, those friendly simple Eskimos and Indians and warriors from Asia and Africa attack him. Mary Poppins picks him up and holds him, and dryly accepts his gratitude to her, while he experiences at last freedom from the "burning heavy thing" that he's been possessed by all day. The swaggering covered guilt, the guilt covered fear. Travers knows something.

But can that save the book when the reader is a sensitive and sensitized child of color. Or for that matter, a sensitive and sensitized child of the "white majority" or "the mainstream." We are in a period when our children think in terms of insult vs. respect and they don't want to hear, or they do want to hear, insulting stereotypes--while closing their minds to the rest. They use their reading to shape their part in playground and hallway politics, without concern for the author's intended effect. For the same reason that older kids will not find it okay to read Huckleberry Finn, kids of color won't feel good about Mary Poppins if it is read to them or if they read it themselves between seven and twelve. Or at least a certain moment will bring up a sense of shame or anger. In the meaner white or Latino kids, including wealthy ones, there will be malicious pleasure in reading about the "inferior barbarians." For the more caring kids, there will be a twinge of disgust at the falsehood. And for the virtuously indignant, this is a natural opportunity.

Under these circumstances Travers irony and awareness, like those of Twain, are going to fly over their heads. So, I say, skip those first pages of "Bad Tuesday" until the child is old enough so you can explain them.

I bought a copy of this book when I was 9. I read it , loved it, but as any child would, eventually lost it. As I was going through a pile of stuff in the attic the other day, I came across it once again. The pages were yellowed and torn, and the spine was falling apart, but the story never lost its magic. I was engrossed in the characters' every move, and I actually cried when the book reached its end. I would recommend Mary Poppins for readers of all ages, for it is a work of art that leaves memories that will be treasured for a lifetime.

Katie Nana has left the Bank family in need of a new nanny. But before they know it, a woman blows in on the East Wind. Literally. She takes the position of caring for the four children, Jane, Michael, and the twins John and Barbara. But with her extremely prim and proper attitude comes magical adventures. A day in the park, having tea, running errands, and even Christmas shopping can turn into an adventure when Mary's around. And the kids love it.

This most decidedly is not the Disney Mary Poppins. Disney toned her down significantly for his movie, making her heart easier to see. Still, it's there if you look closely in the book. I had forgotten just how hard it is to see at times behind Mary's outward appearance and actions. Still, the kids come to love her because they know where they really stand.

As with all books in the series, this one is a series of adventures. Each chapter tells it's own story, each story it's own fun, magical adventure.

Those looking for Disney's Mary will be greatly disappointed. But anyone looking for a fun series of adventures will find a woman who does care for those around her, even if it's not always super obvious.

The brilliance of P. L. Traver's Poppins books is that the character of Mary Poppins is a study in contrast. Like an old-fashioned nanny, on the surface she is severe, critical and exacting. After all, she is entrusted with the serious job of raising British children. Underneath the self-satisfied, and even annoyingly "practically perfect" exterior is a magical soul, who befriends an odd lot of misfits and manages to charm everyone, including some lonely and neglected middle-class British kids of the very early 20th Century. And who can explain jumping into chalk pictures, laughter that sends you floating and many other odd occurrences that Mary takes as matter-of-fact.

The value of reading the Poppins series is that the books don't match the fun but more saccharine movie. The subtleties of a main character who is both lovable and cranky all at the same time make for fun family discussions and learning how to love people for their individual quirks, despite their more annoying characteristics. Every child should have the opportunity to enjoy this quirky, unique classic.

I think it is a good book for all ages. I'm only eight but I think it was way better than the movie. The part I liked best was when the animals got out of their cages.

Have you ever seen the Disney Classic Mary Poppins? If you liked the movie, you will love this book, by P.L. Travers. Mary Poppins, an eccentric nanny, arrives at Cherry Tree Lane. Her newest chldren are named Michael, Jane, and the twins, named John and Barbra. The book does include the favorite scenes when Mary Poppins jumps into the picture and when they got stuck to the ceiling. But do you know what happens on Mary Poppins birthday when it lands on a full moon? The book does include Bert, the charming chimney sweeper in the movie, who is still charming but is a matchman and a person who paints on the sidewalk. Bert went with Mary Poppins into the picture on Mary Poppins day out. Although there are some diferences between the book and the movie but itis a good book. Read it and you will love it.

There must have been fans of P.L. Travers's Mary Poppins who were unhappy when the Disney movie based on the book was released in 1964. Changes made to a story when translating it to film can be jarring and are often for the worse. Movies are so often paler versions of the novels that preceded them. But in this case the reverse is true: Walt Disney's classic film is much, much better than the original book. Readers coming to the book after seeing the movie will, I think, be bored and disappointed with Travers's story.

The character of Mary Poppins in the original book is similar to her portrayal in the movie: she is proper and vain and easily irritated; she possesses magical powers whose limit and source are never explained; she is wont to play mind games with the children. In the book, however, despite the children's affection for her, she is not a particularly likable character. It is easier to like the softer-edged Mary Poppins of the movie. Apart from its portrayal of Mary Poppins herself, the book differs markedly from the movie. Some of the differences are insignificant: in the novel there are four Banks children rather than two--Jane and Michael have a pair of twin siblings who are about a year old; Mrs. Banks in the book does not spend her time cavorting with suffragettes; Travers's Bert is not a chimney sweep. The most important difference, however, is this: the story that Travers tells lacks a story arc. Mary Poppins comes to the Banks's home at the beginning of the book. She leaves at the end. The intervening episodes are filler: the chapters could be rearranged or omitted without any loss to the storyline. This in itself would be okay, if less than ideal, except that the middle episodes are, many of them, excruciatingly boring.

Mary Poppins the film, on the other hand, tells the story of the transformation of Mr. Banks--who hardly figures at all in the novel--from a work-obsessed martinet into a man who understands the importance of family, who recognizes the ephemerality of childhood, whose value system has been shattered and rebuilt for the better. Mary Poppins is the agent of this change, but the chimney sweep Bert is also responsible for some of Mr. Banks's growth. The climactic scene of the movie, wherein Banks's transformation is effected, is a small one: his children apologetically surrender to him the tuppence that had caused such a stir at the bank, where he works, leading to his being fired. Ironically, it is this gift of a tiny sum of money that finally turns Mr. Banks, who has been obsessed with the accumulation of wealth, into a man for whom wealth is secondary.

I understand that it's not really fair to find Travers's book lacking because it differs so significantly from a movie that was released thirty years after its publication. But it is impossible not to compare the book to the iconic film and to find it, well, nothing special. Disney injected heart and depth into a mediocre story that had, for reasons that elude me, attracted an audience. In so doing he turned the commonplace into something extraordinary.

-- Debra Hamel