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First, there’s the book and then there’s the movie.  Where to encounter the narrative first is always the question!  Most of us ‘older’ folk tend to encounter the narrative first in a book, and then later in the movie version.  But for today’s children and for me — especially in the case of Japan’s Studio Ghibli movies at any rate — it’s often the movie first.    When I first got wind of Studio Ghibli’s movie release, Arietty (it came out in Japan in 2010, DVD release July 2011) I noted quickly that it was based on Mary Norton’s The Borrowers (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1953).  The directors at Studio Ghibli — notably Hayao Miyazaki and son, Goro Miyazaki — have occasionally gone to British children’s books for inspiration for their movies.  Their previously released Howl’s Moving Castle was based on Diana Wynne Jones’ book of the same title (published in 1986) and it was through that movie, that I was introduced to Wynne Jones’ writing.

Thanks to Studio Ghibli again, my daughter and I have had a chance to experience The Borrowers by Mary Norton.  I picked up a hardback edition of the novel at a used book sale in Nishinomiya where I lived and began reading it at night to my daughter.  The Borrowers are little people who live under a house in England, and who ‘borrow’ things from the much larger humans that dwell above them.  The family in the first series of the Borrowers books is a small one comprising of the father, Pod, the mother, Homily, and their fourteen year old daughter, Arietty (on whom the movie title is based.)    My daughter and I got about halfway through the novel before she got to see the movie (we rented the DVD in Japan just before the day we left) and it was clear from the snippets I saw of it that the Studio Ghibli team was well into animating the tiny world of the Borrowers with its signature, detailed and colorful animation for which it is famous.  I hope Arietty makes it into the North American viewing market soon, but barring that, The Borrowers still make a great read for parents and children alike.

Stephen Fry, Victoria Wood and Christopher Eccleston are to star in an adaptation of Mary Norton's classic children's novel The Borrowers this Christmas.

The 90-minute drama, penned by “Merlin" writer Ben Vanstone and produced by Working Title Television, will be directed by “This Is England"'s Tom Harper for BBC1.

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‘What’s the point in robbery when nothing is worth taking?’
Adam Ant

There’s a rather shabby but serviceable yellow and gold console table painted with Chinese scenes in my front room, a cut-glass bowl full of oranges in the kitchen, and a white porcelain candlestick on the dining table. They are the wages of sin. It’s not a high wage (it’s even lower than the wages of writing), but I am smugly satisfied with these modest objects. And the sin? Daylight robbery.

I know that strictly speaking my skip robbin’ activities are illegal. But I can’t see the point in a law that says a cut-glass fruit bowl should be crushed and used as hardcore, or that a table is better minced up for mulching the council’s flowerbeds than holding a pile of papers three feet off the floor. Those 1920s tins for flour and sugar are put to better use holding pet food than being crushed and recycled. And my daughters learned to be pretty good at French cricket with the bat and gloves (but no wickets) from the skip at their primary school. At Christmas, I moved up a notch, taking advice on avoiding the CCTV, and rather startling my daughter’s friends by announcing I was goin’ robbin’ on New Year’s Day. The result is a compost heap which I hope will become a home for snakes and might also produce compost that I will forget to use.

As a child, I thrilled to Arrietty and Peagreen’s pilfering in the Borrowers books, and Great Uncle Bulgaria directing Womble operations on Wimbledon Common. I am not as inventive as Arrietty, Pod and Homily, and too large to make a bedroom from cigar boxes. But I try to ‘make good use of bad rubbish’, as Great Uncle B demands. My robbin’ exploits are copy-cat crimes, not in the league of those who carry out Clockwork-Orange style atrocities, but still sparked by admiration for fictional role models.

So I plead guilty, m’lord – but I was under the influence of literature. I admit to having more than 80 milligrams of culture per litre of blood and no, I won’t sign up for detox.