Driven from their home under the floor, the tiny Clock family must survive in the open countryside
Tiny people in the wide world
The Clock family, Pod, Homily and their daughter Arrietty, are Borrowers: people a few inches tall who live secretly in the hidden corners of human houses and borrow what they need. At the end of the first book they were discovered and had to flee the old house where they had always lived. Now they are out in the fields with almost nothing, searching for relatives who may or may not still be living in a badger's set nearby.
Who will enjoy it
Readers aged about seven to eleven, and families reading aloud, who enjoyed The Borrowers and love miniature worlds and gentle adventure.
What you will get
A gentle, absorbing adventure in which a tiny family makes a home in an old boot and learns to survive the wide, dangerous countryside.
The Borrowers Afield Facts: Pages, Genre and Setting
Genre
Children’s Books · Tiny people · Countryside · Survival
Length
224 pages · ≈ 7 h
More about this book
Picture a family the size of a pencil setting up house in a discarded boot on a grassy bank. That is the heart of this book, and Mary Norton makes every detail convincing: hatpins become tools, a sardine tin becomes furniture, and a summer storm becomes a disaster. Arrietty, curious and brave, loves the freedom of the outdoors, while Homily longs for her old kitchen and Pod quietly works out how to keep them all alive.
They meet Spiller, a fierce, silent boy Borrower who lives wild, hunts and seems to know every corner of the countryside, and he becomes a crucial ally when winter comes and a dangerous human, a poacher called Mild Eye, finds their boot. The story is framed, like the first book, as a tale told to a girl named Kate, here by an old man who knew the Borrowers as a child. Beth and Joe Krush's drawings add charm.
Quietly thrilling and full of wonder, it is followed by The Borrowers Afloat. Best read after The Borrowers. Adults reading it aloud often enjoy it as much as the children do. About 224 pages in the Harcourt paperback.
The Borrowers
Five Children and It
Stuart Little
The Borrowers Aloft
The Railway Children
Danny the Champion of the World
Blueberries for Sal
Sarah, Plain and Tall
On the Banks of Plum Creek
Llama Llama Mad at Mama
Princess Academy
Misty of Chincoteague