For one thing it was an extremely busy week, particularly at work which left little time for recreation. Every evening when I got home I would have just enough energy to spend a couple of hours doing my usual chores or spending time with my family. Most nights saw me asleep by nine o'clock!
When Saturday rolled into view and I'd still not started anything panic began to set in. With big family plans that took up most of the day it left only one day for me to get my reading on: today.
Secondly, I wanted something that linked in to a current social theme. I've been thinking a lot about the recent 100th anniversary of the women's right to vote. Yes I could've done the obvious and read one of the recent slew of children's books that has been published to mark the occasion. But I return there to point one and my incredibly busy, no time for real thinking week.
So I came across a copy of Mary Poppins by P.L Travers. First published in 1924 by a woman who would've been considered a pioneer in children's literature (there weren't many female authors being published at all back then) it tells the story of a no nonsense nanny who blows into the lives of the Banks family with all the force of a fierce gale. She turns the lives of the two main children, Jane and Michael Banks upside down, showing them frequent marvels and things that defy logic only to smartly correct them when they discuss what they've seen.
When questioned on page 171 if she'd been at the zoo by one of the children she responds with "Me? A quiet orderly person who knows that early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise... ...I have all I need of zoos in this nursery." Well that's them told then.
I've been a lover of the Disney adaptation for years, with it's sweet spoonful of sugar music and heart rendering message that hard working Dads need to stop, appreciate and understand their children, just as the young children need to respect and consider the feelings of their fathers. I even remember the character of the children's often absent mother being excused by the fact that she is hard at work campaigning for the suffragette cause (see my tenuous link there?)
I almost wish I'd read the book first, so that I could be as frustrated with the film as Travers was when Disney meddled with it. Instead I find no love for the original story, which paints Mary as cold and unfeeling, even borderline alien at points.
The mother's absenteeism in the book is simply that, absenteeism. Its further compounded by the fact that in the one real scene she has she simply can't understand her own children, not the way Mary Poppins does. May I take this moment to note that Travers herself said that Poppins echoed a lot of her own life,which is funny considering the no nonsense attitude she dished out to Walt Disney when he tried (repeatedly) to buy the rights to the book in order to convert it. Its well known that she loathed Disneys alteration of Mary from something cold to the warm and soothing persona of Dame Julie Andrews.
Dad and Bert really are as non existent as Mum and the story goes so far into the fantastical that the Disney version starts to feel far more down to Earth. I just couldn't warm to Mary the way the children did in the book. That being said the writing was simple enough and it managed to keep me hooked from start to finish. I even found a little tinge of disappointment when the wind changed at the end (signalling Mary's departure from the children's lives).
Set in my wonderful home city of London with a special reference to St Paul's Cathedral (which just so happens to be my favourite London landmark) this is book 6 on my list. One I'd recommend for those who are curious and not afraid to have their Disney view of it shattered.
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