The+Borrowers

**The Borrowers**

 * //By Mary Norton//**



**SUMMARY/REVIEW**
//The Borrowers// was originally published in 1952 and was the first in the fantasy series about "little people", called the borrowers. In this first book, Mrs.May starts to tell Kate about how her brother had 'seen' the borrowers when he was staying with his Aunt Sophy to recover from an illness. The story is about three borrowers; Arrietty, the daughter, Pod, her father, and Homily, her mother. The Clock family (as named by the entrance to their home) lives in between the floor boards in the kitchen. Pod must "borrow" from the family in the house, but he is getting old, and the fear of being 'seen' by the big people living in the house has affected their way of life. When Arrietty is granted permission to attend her father to the upstairs of the house on a trip of borrowing, she is ecstatic. She has never seen the upstairs or been outside of their own tiny home, protected by a system of locked grates. When she goes upstairs she is met and 'seen' by the boy (Mrs.May's brother). He, surprisingly, is very friendly to her and offers to hand deliver a note to Arrietty's extended family living in a badger's hole across a field. Arrietty's Aunt and Uncle were forced to emigrate when they had been 'seen' by the big people who then bought a cat, who possibly ate the Uncle and Aunt's daughter. Arrietty's parents did not know of her meeting the boy, and would not have approved so she kept it a secret. The boy ends up finding their home under the floor boards. Scaring the family, he pry's it up and offers some new furniture. At first they did not like his intruding, but then they began to see the advantages. The boy begins transferring furniture and other needs/wants to the little family on regular basis. Their greed and love of the new 'stuff' ends up getting them into trouble. When Mrs.Driver, a housemaid, notices that things have been going missing, she investigates and ultimately finds the little family under the floor boards. Mrs.Driver attempts to have them exterminated like mice, but the family manages to get away. However, the boy, never sees them escape to safety because he is sent back to India. Years later, Mrs.May visits the badger hole with many gifts for the little people. The next day the gifts are gone, but she finds a diary written by Arrietty in it's place. Mrs.May then explains to Kate that Arrietty's handwriting was the same as her brothers.



Mary Norton was an English children's author. (December 10, 1903 - August 29, 1992) She grew up in an old house in Leighton Buzzard, rumered to be the house in her stories, with her father who was a physician. She worked for the War Office in 1940 before her family temporarily moved to the United States. Mary married her first husband, Robert Charles Norton, in 1946. With him she had four children; two boys and two girls. Mary Norton began working for the British Purchasing Commission in New York during WWII. She later married Lionel Boncey in 1970. She died of a heart attack in Bideford, Devon, England in August 1992.
 * AUTHOR BIO **

**OTHER CHILDREN'S LITERATURE**
//The Magic Bedknob//; or, //How to Become a Witch in Ten Easy Lessons// (1943), //Bonfires and Broomsticks// (1945), //The Borrowers Afield// (1995), //The Borrowers Afloat// (1959), //The Borrowers Aloft// (1961), //Are All the Giants Dead?// (1975), //The Borrowers Avenged// (1982). (1). //The Borrowers// was made into a TV-Movie with Hallmark in 1973. It was also made into a BBC TV series in 1992 with a 1993 sequel called //The Return of the Borrowers. The Borrowers// was also turned into a British/American movie in 1997. (2).

**AWARDS**
//The Borrowers// won the Carnegie Medal in England as the outstanding children's book of 1952. It was also selected by a group of judges for the CILIP Carnegie Medal for children's literature as one of the ten most important children's novels in the last 70 years. (2).

**HISTORICAL CONTEXT**
//The Borrowers// depicts the British culture, and Norton's first book //The Magic Bedknob//, and it's sequal, //Bonfires and Broomsticks,// became the basis for the very successful Disney Film //Bedknobs and Broomsticks.//

**MAJOR THEMES**
Family, there may be others in the world like us, imagination, discrimination.

**CITATIONS**
1.) [] 2.) []