Throughout their children's novels, Lewis and Travers bring together heterogeneous collections of characters from all orders of being - humanity, mythology (Greek, Norse, Christian), the animal world (both talking and nontalking beasts), and other fictional sources (for example, nursery rhyme and fairytale figures) - and have them mingle in festival-like gatherings reminiscent of medieval carnival celebrations. ... the interaction among these disparate characters often results in the suspension of hierarchical barriers...

Mary Poppins arrives with the wind, and intervenes in the lives of ordinary humans, making magic, but never admitting that it has taken place. She understands …

Mary Poppins advocates the kind of family life that Walt Disney had spent his career both chronicling and helping to foster on a national level: father at work…

When I was a child, love to me was what the sea is to a fish: something you swim in while you are going about the important affairs of life.

It seems that the analysis of character is the highest human entertainment. And literature does it, unlike gossip, without mentioning real names.

Disco is the best floor show in town. It's very democratic, boys with boys, girls with girls, girls with boys, blacks and whites, capitalists and Marxists, Chi…

By and large, horror fiction is the most difficult to domesticate because part of the point is that it's one step ahead - or behind - everybody else's taste. A…