The Borrowers (1952)

Oh, how I adored this book, as a child. It's not my favourite of the series, or it wasn't then, but it's the point where everything begins, and I love it for that. The books were published in the fifties, so they sometimes have a somewhat old-fashioned turn of phrase, and somewhat old-fashioned ideas. I suppose it's a book that couldn't really be written set in the modern day, either: we're too sceptical, for one thing, and all the rules that governed a big house in the Borrowers' days no longer apply. Everything about this book is just perfectly suited for the setting, both in time and in place.

The thing that I loved most about it, I think, is that for a child it was just within the realm of possibility. Things do go missing like that -- there's never a safety pin or a darning needle when you need one, and scraps of paper are always vanishing, and wherever did that last little corner of toast go? Somebody ate it, or threw it away. Why not a Borrower? And yet I liked the uncertainty, too, the idea that one ten year old boy could have invented this story, because that made it feel more real, too.

The inventiveness of the Borrowers is a delight, too. Writing this book must have been so much fun: figuring out how tiny people would use human-sized implements. A ring for a crown, coins for plates, a flower for a parasol, safety pins to hold gates shut... I had a friend, at that age, who was very good at doing things like that for teddies. The ring pull from a can of coke could be a CD player/cassette player, an empty Ferrero Rocher box could be a boat or a glass display case or a wardrobe or... I've always loved that kind of inventiveness.

Thinking about this book in terms of my children's literature course is kinda interesting, too. I never realised, as a child, that there was a level of wry humour for adults, here. Aunt Sophy with her madeira, thinking that Pod came out of the bottle; her hints to Mrs Driver that the way to keep the Borrowers away was to keep a cork in the bottle; the way Pod escapes Homily to speak to Aunt Sophy, and it's a sort of 'men's club' for him.

It's still fun to read now. Mostly out of nostalgia, I suspect, and a lingering wish that someday me and Arriety might meet, and talk about books and her own adventures. ( )

This slight story about tiny people who live almost invisibly very near us (and who are responsible for all the tiny things which inexplicably go missing) is not as gripping as I remember it being. I read it several times as a kid, and I remember being enchanted with it then. I found it to be a satisfying story, but not as magical as I recalled. ( )

I loved these books when I was a kid. ( )

My blog post about this book is at this link. ( )

This is an interesting book that I think I would have liked a lot when I was younger. It ends rather abruptly, so I guess I'll have to read the rest of the series to find out what happens! ( )