Borrowers Avenged » (First Harcourt Young Classics Edition)

MARY NORTON (1903-1992) lived in England, where she was an actress playwright, and award-winning author. As a child she created a make-believe world in which tiny people inhabited the hedgerows, living their lives out of the sight of humans. It is from this private fantasy that her most well-known books, those about the Borrowers, came about.

Pod, Homily, and Arrietty Clock's huge adventures have been thrilling children young and old for fifty years—and their appeal is as strong as ever in these handsome new paperback packages. While the original beloved interior illustrations by Beth and Joe Krush have been retained, Marla Frazee's striking cover illustrations capture these little people with a larger-than-life appeal.

Children's Literature

Unlike other fantasy stories in which humans instantaneously had shrunk bodily to keyhole-sized proportions, the borrowers, once humans themselves in ages past, gradually shrank in their spirits first and then in their bodies: their downsizing an outward testimony to the shrunken "good" that once flourished in all humans. By the curious nature of her main character, Arietty, author Norton weaves into this snail-paced, survival-adventure, experiences that most children at some point will meet-traveling to unknown places, handling personal relationships; leaning values, manners, and hygiene; and adjusting geographically to where one lives. Dappled with sketches throughout, this book in the "Borrowers" series (now a major motion picture) will delight the appetites of who enjoys a story with generous helpings of details, and a slow simmer to a pleasing dénouement. 1998 (orig.