Listened to this old favorite in audio. Missed the illustrations but oh, it was wonderful to hear it in a British voice!

Another fun read-a-loud with my kiddos! They just want to keep on reading the adventures of Mary Poppins and the Banks children.

audiobook

it was alright, but really these books make Mary a bitch. And thats now what I remember from the original movie i watched years ago. She was so much sweeter there, so it was harder to get through these books

Is it just me, or does Mary Poppins gaslight those kids wicked hard? The more I read these books, the more appalling they seem.... I'm sad.

Just as delightful as I remember - balloons and balloons!

I haven’t read this series before, but it is precious.

Seeing as how I never read the Mary Poppins books as a kid, I thought that I would use this time to go back through them to see what I had missed. And I am so glad I did go back for them.

This is the second book in the series, and as a result is full of stories that I had never heard before and provided another view into the world of Mary and the Banks family. Some of the characters from the first book made a reappearance and there were a lot of new characters to meet as well, but it still felt like the Mary Poppins that we all know.

Although, and I remember this from the first book, I didn’t realise how strict Mary is with the children. That’s what you get when the movie is your only reference point I guess but still.

On to the next one.

So Mary Poppins continues to be not-especially affectionate, pretty grumpy, very uppity, and incredibly vain. Yet she's grown on me in this second book. Not because she's changed but my perception of her has changed. She has to have these characteristics to balance out the adventures and to keep the magic in the realm of reality. Perhaps that doesn't make sense, but I think her attitude keeps the book delightfully "normal" somehow. Anyway, we went ahead and read the next one -- Mary Poppins Opens the Door -- and we enjoyed that. We were both fine with being done after that, though there are two or three more that take place during the other stories.