Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers

Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I've watched the Disney Mary Poppins movie my whole life, and found the backstory in the movie "Saving Mr. Banks" intriguing, although a bit on the dramatic side for my tastes. When the recent sequel came out, which we watched on Christmas Eve, I decided I needed to read the book and find out what the story was really about.

While I see the connection to the movie, this book, and the original Mary Poppins character, are totally random. Having said that, the characters presented in Saving Mr. Banks match up pretty well to the book. If you thought the movie was random, the book lacks utterly in plot, and the characters are shallow, even for a children's book. But being originally authored in the 1930s, I think it was the way of the times. Although the Wizard of Oz was written decades earlier, I find the two similar in style and feel. It makes me want to pick up the classic Winnie the Pooh book for comparison (it is already on my to-read list from the Tao of Pooh), which had had its own back story cinematographied in the recent file Christopher Robin. It is an interesting trend to pick up on pop culture from our youth and present backstories, knowing that a certain portion of the population will pay to see it just out of curiosity and nostalgia.