Have you ever come back as an adult to a book you thought was wonderful as a child but hadn't re-read since then?
I can remember one such book that shall remain nameless, which I came across and excitedly purchased to share with my girls when they were young, only to discover it was poorly written and the characters annoying.
Not so with The Borrowers by Mary Norton, thank goodness! Deservedly the winner of the 1952 Carnegie medal for children's literature.
I'm quite excited to see the new animated adaptation, The Secret World of Arrietty, but I gather that like other film versions it departs quite a bit from the original. I wanted to renew my acquaintance with the book first, so I ordered it up from my local library, and it came in this lovely edition illustrated by Michael Hague. What a treat!
Borrowers of course are 'little people' who live in the various behind-the-scenes nooks and crannies of houses, 'borrowing' small items from the big people for their own uses, such as blotting paper for carpets and matchboxes for dresser drawers. Such uses are a familiar conceit in children's picture books featuring anthropomorphic mice and the like, but they are only part of the charm of Norton's book. Her portrayal of the world from a viewpoint a few inches high is masterful, as in this passage where the adventurous young Arrietty visits the out-of-doors for the first time:
"Cautiously she moved toward the bank and climbed a little nervously in amongst the green blades. As she parted them gently with her bare hands, drops of water plopped on her skirt and she felt the red shoes become damp. But on she went, pulling herself up now and again by rooty stems into this jungle of moss and wood-violet and creeping leaves of clover. The sharp-seeming grass blades, waist high, were tender to the touch and sprang back lightly behind her as she passed..."
But one of the most interesting aspects of the book to me was the way the characters interacted. It is almost a truism in children's literature that parents, of course, stop adventures from happening. That's been so from long before the Grimms and Perreault, and you'll find it these days in any Disney movie too-- usually the mother is dead, Dad is tiny and absent-minded or just plain absent, or the family gets separated by some disaster.
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