Jennifer Trafton
Jennifer Trafton served as the managing editor of Christian History magazine before returning to her first love, children’s literature. Her first novel, The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic, was a nominee for Tennessee’s 2012 Volunteer State Book Award. Jennifer lives with her husband, Pete, and teaches creative writing to children in Nashville. She’s currently working on several delightful new books such as Henry and the Chalk Dragon (to be released in 2017 from Rabbit Room Press)
Bio last updated January 21st, 2019.
Articles by Jennifer Trafton
Born to Fly: Mary Poppins, Bruce Springsteen, and the Spell of Immortality
By Jennifer Trafton
January 21, 2019
Children remind us not to look backward in nostalgia, but to look forward to a freedom that childhood merely prefigures, writes author Jennifer Trafton. The Mary Poppins sequel is a piece of art that unpacks the variety of gifts that imagination offers—and the freedom it promises.
If there’s one theme that links both the old and the new Mary Poppins movies, it’s that you can’t get through to the adults unless you get through to the children first—and even when they grow up, they will need new children to remind them What I love about the movie is not just that it’s about the rediscovery of imagination (music to a children’s book writer’s ears), but that, in each successive scene and song, it unpacks slowly the variety of gifts that imagination offers us, even in—especially in—our grief and confusion and need: In his wonderful little book Theology of Joy, Jurgen Moltmann quotes an old slave spiritual: “How can I play when I’m in a strange land?” In order to truly enjoy life, to laugh without burden and without fear, we must be free The original Mary Poppins is a beloved piece of my childhood, and the trailer promised fidelity to its innocent, playful spirit After spinning tales of his childhood in New Jersey, Springsteen remarked, “The one thing I miss in getting older is the beauty of the blank page—so much of life in front of you, its promise, its possibility, its mysteries, its adventures—that blank page just lying there daring you to write on it I happen to think the new Mary Poppins movie is excellent art, well-written, well-crafted, well-acted, and that it has something universal, not just personal, to say