Mary Poppins - P. L. Travers

The Banks children, Jane and Michael, change nannies just about as often as most people change their clothes. It's not that they're naughty, exactly - just awkward. Everyone in the household is at their wits' end with them - until Mary Poppins arrives

This, the first book about Mary Poppins, will be familiar to everyone who has seen the film. For it is in this book that Jane and Michael draw up their advertisement for a nanny, and Mary Poppins appears out of the sky with her parrot-headed umbrella which talks. She is strict but fair, slides happily up the banisters, and takes the children on the most extraordinary outings - to a funfair inside a pavement picture; to uncle Andrew who sails up to the ceiling when he laughs - which she firmly denies afterwards. Needless to say, the children are devastated when she leaves, but by then, they and their parents are far more of a family than they ever were before Mary Poppins appeared.