Mary Poppins in 2004, Walt Disney first attempted to purchase the film rights to "Mary Poppins" from P. L. Travers as early as 1938, but was rebuffed because Travers did not believe a film version of her books would do justice to her creation and did not want an animated cartoon based on it. The books had been a favourite of Disney's daughters when they were children, and he finally succeeded in purchasing the rights in 1961, although Travers demanded and got script approval rights. The relationship between Travers and Disney is detailed in "Mary Poppins She Wrote", a biography of Travers,
Mary Poppins her umbrella and the West wind carries her away. "Mary Poppins" contained a version of the chapter "Bad Tuesday" in which Mary and the children use a compass to visit places all over the world in a remarkably short period of time. The original story in the 1934 edition contained a variety of cultural and ethnic types of Chinese, Eskimo, sub-Saharan Africans, and Native Americans; Travers responded to criticism by revising the chapter twice. A 1967 revision removed offensive words and stereotypical descriptions and dialogue, but kept the plot of visiting foreign people; in 1981 a second revision replaced people