One thing that fascinated me is this subtle theme of terror or the frequent use of the word ‘terrible.’ The word is used several times by Travers. Mary Poppins is both reassuringly solid, stable and no-nonsense, but also extraordinary, mysterious and slightly unpredictable (unpredictable not because she is capricious, but because she is unknown).

There is stability in the house, but also the expectation that something marvelous could happen at any time, though usually not in the house. She interacts quite as a matter of course with animals, she pops into a chalk picture with Bert the match man, she is acquainted with a star from the constellation Pleiades, her uncle gets filled with laughing gas on certain birthdays and floats in the air. She just takes care of the children, and because of knowing her they are exposed to the magical world that she lives in. She doesn’t come with any stated or unstated goal. She comes, she bides a while and takes care of Jane, Michael and the twins, John and Barbara, and she departs…with the promise that she will return. Mary Poppins comes and puts the Banks’ lives in order, but she also introduces them to quite a few disorderly things…at least to the children. The general assessment is that is all about order. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had let myself read it for pleasure instead of looking for it’s meaning. Bankscame out my interest in the book was renewed, though perhaps I read it too intellectually. Composer Richard Sherman recently revealed, ' She hated everything,” he says, recalling her insistence that they not make up words, such as Bert the chimney sweep rhyming “ responstable” with “ constable.” ' She said, ‘Unmake it up.’ Oh God, it killed us.I first read Mary Poppins when I was twelve, but at the time I was more interested in authors like Jane Austen or Agatha Christie. Mixing animation with live action and adding musical elements to the film were also a particularly sore spot for Travers. Her biggest complaint was that the film's version of Mary Poppins was too nice.

But Travers didn't share the sentiment, frustrated by the child-friendly direction that the Sherman brothers, Richard and Robert, along with writer Don DaGradi, wanted to take the film. Most authors would be thrilled to have a company like Disney adapt their work onto the big screen, even if it isn't identical to their book. However, the adaption took far more work than many films as it was a struggle to get Travers to sign over the rights to the book. Travers wrote the book about the fantastical nanny who saves the Banks family in 1934, and it was eventually adapted into a film by Disney in 1964. Even though Mary Poppinsis a Disney classic, the original author of the book it was based on hated the Disney movie.

Original mary poppins book