Never Be Cross or Cruel

Caitlin Flanagan has a piece on P. L. Travers in the recent New Yorker, found (for the moment, anyway) online here. Although I have doubts about nannies "as a force in American life," a premise than can resound only in the Conde Nast building and the women's pages of Salon.com, Flanagan thankfully forgets this opening thesis and instead cobbles together an assortment of intriguing facts about Travers and the Mary Poppinses of books and film. My favorite anecdote concerns Travers buttonholing Walt Disney at a party after the film's premier, and telling him that the animation sequence had to go. "'Pamela,' he replied, 'The ship has sailed.'"

I was one of those sixties kids who adored the movie and went on to love the book, too, even recognizing their distinctions. I'm dying to see the stage musical--any reports?