Mary Poppins Returns

Mary Poppins Returns is the story of the Disney film written out for 8 year olds, and it starts with a nanny coming down out of the clouds on the end of a kite string.

What happens

London, winter 1934. Work is hard to find, the queues outside the soup kitchens get longer every day, and Jack the lamplighter cycles his round shouting hullo at strangers until they smile back.

At number 17 Cherry Tree Lane, Michael Banks has grown up. His sister Jane lives across town and keeps finding reasons to call in. Michael has three children, a kitchen tap that has just come off in his hand and a housekeeper who puts his hat in the pantry.

Then two solicitors nail a repossession notice to his front door. Michael took a loan against the house last year, when his wife Kate was ill. He's three months behind. He has five days to pay back the lot, and it's more than he earns in a year.

His children are the quiet heartbreak here. John and Annabel already know to ask for bruised plums at half off, because that's what their mother used to do. They ring the plumbers themselves, from memory. Only Georgie is still small enough to think a flooded kitchen is a treat and to go looking for his wellies.

Then a kite gets away from Georgie in the park, and pulls him off his feet, and something up in the clouds pulls back.

The writing is more workmanlike than magical, which is what books of films usually are. It's also generous with things the film flashes past. You get a few paragraphs inside the head of the kinder of the two solicitors, who quietly hates his own job. You get a passage from the point of view of the kite, which is much better than it sounds.

A word for parents before you start it. Kate died within the last year and the whole book sits inside that. Michael finds her necklace in a box in the attic and talks to her. The family might really lose the house. That's the engine of the story rather than the magic, and a child who has lost a parent, or who has heard money worries at home, will feel every bit of it.

For a reader who knows the songs and wants more of the house, it's a satisfying way back in.

What to read next

If they like a magical nanny arriving where the grown ups have lost control, try Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang next. A farm, a father away at the war, an uncle after the family's money, and a book that keeps stopping to tell you how the film was made.