Fantasy

The Borrowers

Author Mary Norton

  • Story

    Meet the Borrowers, tiny people living in the secret places of houses – behind the mantelpiece, under the kitchen clock. They furnish their homes with things that they ‘borrow’ from the humans, stamps as pictures and cotton reels as stools. Arriety Clock longs to go out borrowing with her father, Pod, who finally agrees to take her. While on a borrowing expedition she is seen by a human boy

  • Why we chose it

    A classic children’s story. Children love the idea of a tiny, hidden world.

  • What a young reviewer said

    It makes you look at the world anew. You notice the small things. (Kirsty, age 15)

  • First published

    1952, J.M. Dent and Sons, London, UK