CCLP Read: The Borrowers by Mary Norton (1952)

Yay, The Borrowers is my first read for the Classic Children's Literature Party that I'm hosting!

If you've never read this delightful book then I highly encourage it! I just bought the boxed set of the first four novels last year and did read them last year, and I can honestly they are some of my favorites, with the first book, The Borrowers, being an absolute classic. I thoroughly enjoyed re-reading it this month.

The story follows a family of tiny people, known as Borrowers, who live in the houses of big people, meaning us. This family has Pod Clock, his wife Homily, and their only daughter Arrietty. They're probably the size of 1/12 dollhouse people, and so their belongings are a hodgepodge of items they've created, such as Arrietty's bedroom that's made of two cigar boxes, or things they've borrowed and repurposed, like the cog they use for their fireplace. They live under the kitchen floor in an old Victorian house, and their only entry too and from their home is under the enormous Grandfather Clock that must never be moved or it might stop working.

Arrietty is a lover of adventure, and a quite educated girl, for a Borrower. She even knows how to read and to write, and she has tiny Tom Thumb editions of certain books that she peruses regularly. Unfortunately for Arrietty, she has reached that frustrating age of feeling stifled, so just hitting the teenage years, which I myself remember quite well. Arrietty so desperately wants to be allowed to go borrowing with her father. Except, only boys are trained as borrowers. 

Homily raises an excellent point, though, in that if something should happen to Pod, what would become of them? There are no other Borrowers left in the house besides themselves. So reluctantly, Pod agrees to teach his daughter the art of being a borrower. I say reluctantly because he knows the dangers of what could happen to her. On Arrietty's first outing, Pod allows her to step outside into the enormous garden while he works at borrowing carpet fibers for Homily. Arrietty, wild with delight at being outdoors, lets her guard down, and before she knows what's happening, she's face to face with a human boy.

So begins their adventure, and so begins the reality that you can't just bury your head in the sand and expect a problem to go away. Sometimes dealing with a problem means actually moving forward and doing something you would rather not do, even if it's bothersome or difficult. 

Like I said, The Borrowers is one of my favorite children's books, and they are one of my favorite series. We haven't even gotten to the really good bits yet because those happen later on. In its own subtle way, this book gently confronts the age old idea of gender roles, and that, maybe some things need to change. There's no reason, other than tradition, why Arrietty couldn't learn borrowing. But it's the same reason why a lot of girls never learned the trade of their family lineage, because tradition dictates only the boys should learn it. I'm not one for progressive ideology, but I do know that helping my dad with projects was usually a lot of fun, and because I didn't have a brother, it was my privilege to help him. And if my grandfather had been alive during my lifetime, I would have begged and cajoled and pleaded for him to teach my the art of carpentry. I regret that the family tradition has been lost.

The writing style for The Borrowers is charming, albeit rather old-world, but that is a lot of its charm. I love how certain words are changed up a little bit, and just the nature of the Borrowers themselves is so fun, with their quirky ways, and their odd little names, and their views of people, or Human Beans as they call us. If anything The Borrowers is a book that gets the adventure started and then it just keeps on going. All the books really need to be read in order, and it is almost impossible to not immediately pick up the next book in the series when you've finished one. They're just that compelling.

Have you ever read The Borrowers? If so, what did you think of it? What do you think of our intrepid little family as they begin their grand adventure into the wide, wide world?

On a totally random side note, I absolutely ADORE the miniseries of The Borrowers and The Return of the Borrowers from 1992 and 1993! Ian Holm and Penelope Wilton star as Pod and Homily Clock and I absolutely adore Rebecca Callard as Arrietty. She's a pure delight in the role. They can be a little challenging to find, but I do know they are on YouTube, although I plan to buy the UK DVDs and a region free DVD player to solve the problem of not being able to watch them!