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 (character) the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games, a group of over thirty Mary Poppins with umbrellas descended en masse to fight and defeat the nightmares (which consisted of the villains Queen of Hearts, Captain Hook, Cruella de Vil, and Lord Voldemort) that were haunting children's dreams. The sequence is called "." Terry Pratchett's Susan Sto Helit character satirizes Mary Poppins in various ways, most explicitly in the novel "Hogfather". In "The Simpsons" season 8 episode "Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(Annoyed Grunt)cious", Marge hires a new housekeeper for the family, named Shary Bobbins (voiced by Maggie Roswell), who attempts to help them become