Hey, Disney, You Call This Mary Poppins?

The day I started reading Mary Poppins, I marched up to the bookshelves in our living room determined to pick up a "real" book.  I was definitely in the mood for some fiction, and I promised myself I would read a grown-up story this time.  We have so many of them--alluring, thick novels from Balzac to Rushdie--and I was going to lose myself in one.  I needed a break from kids' books, I said.  Now...what to read, what to read...Hey, cool: Mary Poppins!

I sighed in amused exasperation, told myself Oh-well-I-tried, and then settled down, perfectly happy, on the sofa.  I only got happier.

We've all had the experience of reading a book that we had long known solely as a movie, and most of us know the outcome: We find the book always, always to be better.  Sometimes, as happened to me with Gone with the Wind and Pride and Prejudice, we can acknowledge that although the book is better, the movie is still pretty darn good, and there's room for everyone at the table.  Other times, we discover that the movie did the book such a gross disservice that it really shouldn't even exist--or it should at least have a different title.  That happened to me when I finally read Mansfield Park.  And Mary Poppins.

If you adore the silver-screen musical and can't wait to get tickets to the Broadway version (or perhaps you've already gone and seen it), be warned.  Reading the book will probably change your perception of these forever.  You'll never be able to see the movie again without noticing just how much is missing.  It's a comparatively slim book, so you wouldn't expect it to contain so much more than a full-length film, but it does.

Sure, the movie shows Mary jumping in and out of pictures and visiting Uncle Alfred on the ceiling, but how could the film-makers have left out the compass that takes Mary and the kids to the four corners of the world, the baker lady who has Mary steal her young charges' paper stars so she and Mary can climb a pair of ladders to glue them onto the night sky?  And what about the tale Mary tells of the cow who couldn't stop dancing because a fallen star had gotten caught on her horn, or the chapter in which Jane and Michael's baby twin siblings talk to Mary, the sunlight, the wind, and a starling one quiet afternoon in the nursery?  Come to think about it, what about the existence of those twin babies in the first place?

I actually found Mary herself more interesting and likable in the book.  She's vain and conceited, but she has magic, everybody knows her and admires her, and she wants to show the children a good time, even though she'd never admit it.  I think the Julie Andrews version comes across as too soft and gentle, so that in the moments when she needs to be harsh, it just seems jarring.  In the book, it's funny because the quips and attitude are consistent.  Mary is like the nineteenth-century British nanny version of House.  (Well, not exactly like that, but inasmuch as they are both unrelentingly gruff, fascinating, and gosh-darn-it, kind of lovable.)

This book made me laugh out loud several times.  I'm down to the last chapter and don't want it to end.  Luckily, I found out, by reading the author's bio, that it's part of a series.  I also found out that the author, P.L. Travers, shared a birthday with Isaiah.  I plan to use that as an icebreaker when I seek her out in heaven, and then I'll beg her to tell me a story.  

But the Books Are All Right?

Someone broke into our car two weeks ago.  It happened on a Saturday night (or early Sunday morning).  That Saturday afternoon, Matt had taken Isaiah and our sister-in-law Magda on one of their favorite excursions--thrift-store shopping--so I could work on some writing projects.  My husband came home glowing with joy.  "We hit the jackpot!" he told me proudly as he opened the trunk of our Honda Accord.  There was a slew of books inside: classic children's books in decent shape.  I spied The Wind in the Willows, Pippi Longstocking, and Betsy, Tacy, and Tib on top of a sprawling pile of titles.  

"And they were free," Matt continued, prouder than before.  Apparently a Catholic elementary school near one of the thrift shops had decided to clean house and left stacks of books outside its doors for people to take.  I gave my husband a big impulsive kiss on the cheek.  This was better than Christmas.

We left the books in the trunk--simply because, in a studio apartment with three people and hundreds of books already, there was nowhere else to keep them--and the next morning, when Matt took Isaiah out for a walk, he discovered the shattered passenger's side window.  Matt called me on his cell to tell me what had happened.  There had been nothing really valuable inside the car, and nothing seemed to be missing.  Our would-be thief hadn't even taken the loose change or the radio.  Matt said it looked like he had just reached in, rifled through the glove compartment and the middle console, and left.  My book of CDs had been opened, but none of the CDs were missing (sometimes it pays to be a nerd).  Matt had already called our insurance company, and they would pay for the window in full.  It seemed like everything was going to be OK.

Then I got a cold, light feeling in my stomach.  "Did you check the trunk?" I asked.  "Are the books still there?"  My wonderful husband, bless his heart, didn't even laugh.  He just reassured me, nerd-to-nerd, that he had checked and the books were safe.

Honda Accords come and go, but a free pile of classic children's books is a rare find.  So is a husband who realizes that.

Fruit

We just got back from vacation in Kansas last week, and thanks to my wonderful husband's child-entertaining abilities and some nice long naps from our son, I was actually able to read.  I gobbled up the sweet and luscious Esperanza Rising (Scholastic, 2000) by Pam Munoz Ryan, which has been on my list for a long time.  

At first, the language annoyed me just a little bit: not the writing style, which is robust and poetic and earthy, but the occasional Spanish word or phrase slipped in and then defined.  I love Spanish, but dialogue like this--"Que paso, nina?  What happened?"--made me grit my teeth a bit.  No one speaks that way.  You say the sentence in the language you and your listener know; only if you're actually trying to teach someone a new language do you bother to say things twice.  So I felt like I was reading a novel that was also trying to be a "Fun Way to Learn a Little Spanish," which I resented.  I would have preferred it if Ryan could have simply provided context clues, instead of outright translations, to make the Spanish accessible for her young readers.  

But enough of that and on to plot.  Ryan has woven a story as beautiful, simple, and subtle as the zigzag blanket that Esperanza crochets throughout the book.  It's the story of a young girl who has grown used to a life of wealth and ease as a rancher's daughter in Mexico.  A series of unfortunate events that would make Lemony Snicket cringe forces Esperanza and her newly widowed mother to flee the country in secret and become migrant workers in California, where they live and toil alongside the couple and son who used to be their servants in Mexico.  

Esperanza is an endearing character: naive and pampered, but well-meaning.  It is poignant to watch her grow from a girl who can't stand dirt and yet has never handled a broom into a budding young woman adept at various kinds of manual labor, paying her own bills and putting aside savings in the hope of bringing her grandmother over from Mexico.  Yet one of the most touching aspects of the book, I think, is Esperanza's mother.  Clearly no snob, she is nothing but grateful to her former servants for helping her and her daughter start a new life, and she embraces the people and the work in the migrant camps.  Esperanza has a harder time, and receives a rebuke from her mother when she won't let a poor girl play with her cherished doll for fear of the girl's soiled hands.  I couldn't help but muse (this is the mom in me) that Esperanza's mother, though grieved over the loss of her home, her husband, and her lifestyle, may secretly welcome the realization that her daughter has been too sheltered and cherish the downfall that will help her grow.

At the migrant camps, Esperanza becomes acquainted with some workers who want to strike for better wages and living situations.  At first she feels nothing but distaste for their actions, which put everyone in danger, but by the end of the novel she wonders if perhaps those strikers, who have been rounded up and sent back to Mexico (even though some of them are American citizens) may have been right.  She never makes a firm decision on that, and the nuance that now tinges her increasingly complex world-view is one of the things I admire most about the book.

I was filled with even more admiration when I read Ryan's afterword, in which she reveals that most of the circumstances in the tale were based on the experiences of her own grandmother, who did indeed find herself expelled from a life of privilege in Mexico to struggle in poverty in the U.S.  For those of us grown-up readers of children's lit. who are feeling frustrated, anxious, or even desperate in our present economy, this story can pack quite a punch.  In fact, as Matt and I wait and wait and wait for our apartment to sell (on the market for ten months and counting...), I find myself recalling the advice Esperanza receives from her father: "Aguantate tantito y la fruta caera en tu mano...Wait a little while and the fruit will fall into your hand."  And maybe our whole country is beginning to taste the fruit promised by a Mexican proverb with which Ryan prefaces her novel: "El mas rico el rico cuando empobrece que el pobre cuando enriquece.  The rich person is richer when he becomes poor, than the poor person when he becomes rich."