Summary

“Christmas Shopping” describes Mary Poppins, Jane, and Michael’s adventures in a large store where they are buying Christmas gifts for the Banks family. Mary is wearing brand-new fur-topped gloves and feels pretty all day. Soon, they finish their shopping and Jane and Michael are sad to leave, when all of a sudden a small girl appears wearing nothing but a “light wispy strip of blue stuff that looked as though she had torn it from the sky” (181). She is Maia, one of the seven sisters of Pleiades, the constellation, and she reminds Jane and Michael that their father once pointed out to them the seven stars. She is delighted to meet the children, whom she has watched from the sky for a long time, and she appears to know Mary Poppins very well. She declares that she has come...