Praise for Noel Streatfeild: "Noel Streatfeild's position in the children's book world is unique. She is endlessly inventive, full of verve and real understanding of the surfaces of childhood. Her stories are rich in documentary interest and entertainment, escapism of a most satisfying sort." TLS "Noel Streatfeild has that happy, skilful knack of turning her characters into real people -- something which only really good novelists can do." BBC Children's Hour Praise for Mary Poppins "Like all great children's classics Mary Poppins is frightening and sad as well as magic and very funny." The Observer "Absolutely alive, and aglint with magic." Walter de la Mare

Noel Streatfeild grew up in a vicarage. Her father eventually became Bishop of Lewes. Noel trained as an actress, and acted for nine years before writing her first book, for adults. She did not write her first (and most famous) children's book until 1936 -- Ballet Shoes. Thereafter she wrote more than thirty other children's books, some of which were televised, and all of which were hugely popular. Noel died in 1986. P.L. Travers was born in 1899 in Maryborough in Queensland, Australia and was one of three sisters. She worked as a secretary, a dancer and an actress, but writing was P.L. Travers's real love, and for many years she was a journalist. It was while recuperating from a serious illness that she wrote Mary Poppins -- "to while away the days, but also to put down something that had been in my mind for a long time", she said. She recieved an OBE in 1977, and died in 1996.