I wrote this as an introduction to a book, by Giorgia Grilli, about Mary Poppins. Currently I have a small son who is determined to go up the chimney, like Bert, and is determinedly trying to get into every fireplace and up every chimney he passes. It seemed like a good time to put this piece of writing back out into the world.
I encountered Mary Poppins, as so many of my generation, and those that followed it did, through the film; but I saw the film as a very small boy, and it stayed in my head as a jumble of scenes, leaving behind mostly a few songs and a vague memory of Mr Banks as a figure of terror. I knew I had enjoyed it, but the details were lost to me. Thus I was delighted to find, as a five or six year old, a Puffin paperback edition of Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers, with a picture of pretty Julie Andrews flying her umbrella on the cover. The book I read was utterly wrong – this was not the Mary Poppins I remembered – and utterly, entirely right.
Not until I read Giorgia Grilli’s book on Mary Poppins did I understand why this was. I am not sure that I had given it any thought previously – Travers’ Mary Poppins was a natural phenomenon, ancient as mountain ranges, on first-name terms with the primal powers of the universe, adored and respected by everything that saw the world as it was. And she was a mystery. Mary Poppins defies explanation, and so it is to Professor Grilli’s credit that her explanation of and insight into the Banks family’s nanny does nothing to diminish the mystery, or to lessen Mary Poppins’ appeal.
The patterns of the first three Mary Poppins books are as inflexible as those of a Noh play: she arrives, brings order to chaos, sets the world to rights, takes the Banks children places, tells them a story, rescues them from themselves, brings magic to Cherry Tree Lane, and then, when the time is right, she leaves.
I do not ever remember wishing that Mary Poppins was my nanny. She would have had no patience with a dreamy child who only wanted to be left alone to read. I did not even wish that I was one of the Banks children, at the Circus of the Sun or having tea on the ceiling, and perhaps that was because, unlike many other children in literature, they did not feel permanent. They would grow, Jane and Michael, and soon they would no longer need a nanny, and soon after that they would have children of their own.
No, I did not want her for my nanny and I was glad the Banks family, not mine, had to cope with her, but still, I inhaled the lessons of Mary Poppins with the air of my childhood. I was certain that, on some fundamental level, they were true, beneath truth. When my youngest daughter was born I took the older two aside and read them the story of the arrival of the New One. Philosophically, I suspect now, the universe of Mary Poppins underpins all my writing – but this I did not know before I read Professor Grilli’s work.
It would not be overstating the case to suggest that Professor Grilli is the most perceptive academic I have so far encountered in the field of children’s literature, and I have encountered many of the breed. She understands its magic and she is capable of examining and describing it without killing it in the process. Too many critics of children’s literature can only explain it as a dead thing in a jar. Professor Grilli is a naturalist, and a remarkable one, an observer who understands what she observes. We are fortunate to have her, and we should appreciate her while she is here, before she too walks through a door that is not there, or before the wind blows her away.
A criminally underrated line of foreshadowing in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is this:
“The coats were rather too big for them so that they came down to their heels and looked more like royal robes than coats when they had put them on.”
I just love that image. Right at the start, Lewis tells us that these four children look like kings and queens, and I think too often we just skip over it.
Imagine what it will be like being the last man standing on The Demeter.
You’ve searched the ship; you don’t have a stowaway. Therefore the only rational explanation, awful as it is, is that one of your fellow crewmates is responsible.
But what happens when there’s only two of you left, and you know you’re not the murderer, so it must be the other person, and you’re waiting to see if they’ll make a move on you too
BOLD and BADGER!!! Ugh, those storylines will always make me sob like a very small child- whoever put them on youtube has A LOT to answer for.
Taken from this ask meme- thank you so much, friend!
Paper- favourite children’s book?
This is SO HARD! The Crow Starver by Dick King Smith, the Wind on Fire Trilogy by William Nicholson and His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman are all up there along with Anne of Green Gables by L.M Montgomery and the Little House books by Laura Inglis Wilder.
I’m so excited that we’re all reading Dracula together. As we temporarily leave our friend Jonathan in Transylvania sans shaving mirror, to catch up with Nerd Queen Mina Murray, I thought I’d volunteer a little close reading walk-through of some of the stuff we’ve already seen. I do this as someone who has 1) seen a bunch of posts saying Don’t Panic Because of Problematic™ Elements and 2) taught Dracula in both literature and history classes because I’m that kind of nerd, I mean professor. Also, I thought it might be helpful to have an illustration of how you (yes, you!) can read and find multiple meanings in a text.
If anyone replies on this post with a variation on “the curtains are blue,” that person is getting blocked. Okay? Are we sitting comfortably? Good. Let’s talk about Jonathan Harker and Orientalism. Conveniently, we can do this using just evidence from Chapters 1-2; but you’ll be able to see more of this throughout the book. The brilliant Edward Saïd came up with the term Orientalism to describe taking “the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning ‘the Orient.’” As it happens, it is super easy to illustrate how Jonathan’s perceptions of his journey participate in Orientalism.
Ex. 1, as he enters Budapest: The
impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the
East; the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is
here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish
rule.
So here is Jonathan, in the city of Budapest, which got a massive makeover just five years before, in 1892, to celebrate the 1000-year anniversary of its mythical founding. The fancy imperial architecture is fresh and shiny. Also brand new (as of 1896) is Budapest’s electrified subway, the oldest in continental Europe. But to Jonathan, he’s entering “the traditions of Turkish rule,” which have been rhetorically opposed to European liberalism since at least the late sixteenth century. Before that, it’s muddier, and early modern political realities are much more complicated than that, but I’m not going to digress here on what the history of this region actually is. What’s crucial is that, despite all this complex reality (and the subway system), for Jonathan, he crosses a bridge and BAM, rhetorical departure from the West, entry into the East, which is characterized by sensuality, superstition, and despots (who can be sensual as well as tyrannical. Remind you of anyone?)
Ex. 2, the trains: It seems to me that the further east you go the
more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?
Again, we have a simple equation here. The more East you go, the less modernity and technology you have. Orientalism 101. The Count’s elaborate and generous hospitality, too, fits the stereotypes of Oriental rulers. And we’ve already talked a lot about all the peasants and their Primitive Superstitions.™ But wait!
The Eastern peasants, with their multiple local languages and their quaint costumes and their worship at roadside shrines and their reliance on physical totems like the rosary… they are right about the way the world of the novel works, and our friend Jonathan, as it happens, is wrong. If Jonathan has a hope of surviving, he had better start relinquishing some of his respectable certainties (who is more respectable than an English solicitor with vague allegiance to the Church of England?) in favor of acknowledging the messy realities of where he finds himself. And all of this is 1) pretty explicit in the text 2) very complex in terms of how it asks us, the readers, to consider how we think about categories like modernity, civilization, and superstition.
Ta-da! See? Lit crit is meant to be fun, actually. [Take a literature or history course if you can; we’re doing this sort of thing all the time.]
While I strongly disagree with the general attitude on this site towards adult fiction, I do understand the complaint that most fantasy adventure series are about teenagers, and therefore really recommend The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica by James A. Owen. They are written as adult fantasy, but generally marketed towards a middle-grade audience, due to their style and vibe.
The books span decades (centuries, actually, if we count the time travel and alternate dimensions, etc.) and the three protagonists are full blown adults. In the first book, they are, respectively, 19, 25, and 31. Three young men, who meet under mysterious circumstances, become great friends, and dive into many magical adventures. These adventures technically happen over the span over many decades – they have jobs in the meantime, wives and children, etc. Decidedly NOT in a “baah, boring adult life NOW it’s magic time” but they are actually just adult men with adult lives and families and jobs they love, who also have magical adventures.
And there are plenty of other characters, of various age groups, like one who is a young girl in one book, and later a young woman in later books, and many other adult characters who happily go along in fantasy worlds.
The stories can get really dark, are sometimes very complicated, and contain many allusions to literature, history and mythology. But there’s also battle goats, flying ships, pirates, talking animals driving fancy cars, lots of humour, and generally things one would rather find in children’s books.
So if you want to read about adults having fun and whimsical adventures, look at these.
This has become easily my most popular drawing since I’ve started making these book prints, (I’ll put this down to a general sense of wistfulness and longing on Tumblr) and I’ve very happily made a good few sales and got some nice reviews.
I’ve been able to bulk order a bit of stock and reduce the price on Etsy as I don’t need to pay the print on demand costs anymore. If anybody would like a copy to put up in their office/bedroom/library (or all 3 at once for those with studio apartments) the new price is up here with free delivery to the US and UK!
If you’d like a copy for free, reblog and tag #dreamlibrarygiveaway and I’ll pick someone out at random on 24/04/22 and post an 8x10 print to you. I’ll also pick 3 others and send out a 50% code.
I have made a new quiz with Elizabeth Goudge recs as the result. This time, I included eight of her books that I consider to have the cosiest, most rural, cottage-y settings, so to speak. I did not include the Eliot trilogy, because I always recommend them the most, regardless of other factors. Have fun!
What a lovely quiz! I seriously want to live inside some of those pictures. Linnets and Valerians was my result, which I’m delighted by because it sounds like a lovely book. I’ve no idea whether this is accurate at all but on first impressions it gives me the same sort of vibes as The Phoenix and the Carpet.
