Mary Shepard Mary Shepard Mary Eleanor Jessie Knox née Shepard (25 December 1909 – 4 September 2000) was an English illustrator of children's books. She is best known for the "Mary Poppins" stories written by P. L. Travers (1934 to 1988): "Mary Shepard: Putting Mary Poppins in the picture", "The Times" of London titled an obituary article. She used her married name Mary Knox outside the publishing industry. She was the daughter of E. H. Shepard, a famous illustrator of children's literature including "Winnie-the-Pooh" by A. A. Milne in the 1920s and a 1931 edition of "The Wind in the Willows" by
Mary Poppins British children's literature during the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games. In a sequence called "", over thirty Mary Poppins' descended with umbrellas to fight and defeat the villains Queen of Hearts, Captain Hook, Cruella de Vil, and Lord Voldemort, who were haunting children's dreams. The silhouette of Mary Poppins with an umbrella was used on the cover of the special issue of the journal "Friction" dedicated to the 6th World Tribology Congress in Beijing. It shows the process of detachment of an adhesive contact made in the form of a flat punch in the character's shape. Mary