Mary Poppins

P.L. Travers tells us a story about The Banks Family and their family and economic issues around that time which could be in the 1900’s. What I found in the book was a different sort of charm from the film--a different sort of Mary Poppins who was more severe, sarcastic and egotistical, who doesn't sing and who never says "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious"--yet was still very well-loved by the children she nannies, and still managed to help them see the magic in life. There are a lot of difficulties shown in the film about Travers when she was a child and the reason why she sold the rights of the book. However, these issues are not shown in the movie where Disney makes a twist of the story to shows us a different, bright side where the economic issues are not shown but instead they focus in the family bonding.

In the book, The Banks are a family of six where the father (Mr. Banks) is the support in the family. He states that having a family with kids and having a fancy life cannot go together because money will not be enough to support both of them. This attitude shows that having kids is a burden to a family because there are too much expenses to cover like: food, school, etc., that is a true for a medium/low class family where only one member of the family takes responsibility of a large family like The Banks.

Child rearing is one of the other themes that is recurring in Mary Poppins. Child rearing can be both difficult and rewarding at the same time. The goal of every parent is to have a child grow up to be a respectable and resourceful adult in society. Building a sturdy character in a child takes time, parental involvement and unconditional support and love, but any investment will provide a lot of help children with the best possible start in life. P.L. Travers tells us that child were put aside from the material stuff that worried the Banks. Mary Poppins could have been a tough babysitter but she took care of the children more that the parents did.

On the other hand, The Disney Studios made the movie about Mary Poppins doesn’t show The Banks as a family struggling with money but they show a more sentimental version in the story where The Banks children (Michael and Jane) were put aside from the family interests and that is the one of the reasons why Mary Poppins shows up in the house of The Banks to solve those family bonding issues. The film can be good for children because it actually can stimulate the imagination, and the creativity of a kid: I for example tried to arrange my room by making sounds with my fingers at some point of my life. Still the film contains some messages that can be quite interesting and useful for any other person of any other age.

About P.L. Travers, in the movie about her life, it is shown her struggle about selling the rights for the book to Walt Disney and how difficult is for her to make the producers of the movie, to understand that Mary Poppins was not the hero of her novel as she was taking care of the children, but to show that not everything can be fixed in life like for example: When she was a child and had to bear with her father’s addiction to alcohol; this shows how children have to deal with familiar problems at that young age and deal with it their whole life. In the case of Travers, she was trying to keep her childhood as a secret from people who may find out, throughout the movie, how her real father was.

In conclusion, Mary Poppins is a great story about magic and circumstances that changed The Banks’ life forever where children will find it very inventive and unique. As for the movie, it is sentimental and, as Mary Poppins says, "Practically perfect people never permit sentiment to muddle their feelings." but being not practically perfect, I find it irresistible. Plenty of other adults will feel the same way and, needless to say, so will the kids.

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