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Summary: dated by wonderful
Review: I first read this classic when I was in grade school and haverevisited it every five or so years -- I rare thing that I reread abook or short story at all! I was engaged in the lives of the "little people" in their Victorian lives, pleased by the strong characters who even for their day were not quite as stereotyped as I feared they might be. A wonderful book for children and parents to read together.
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Summary: THE BOOK WAS GREAT
Review: I read this book a lot of times and it still was not boring.
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Summary: A great book but confusing in the first chapters.
Review: I thought this book was a great book and I enjoyed it. Me and my friends read it for a Book Club in Stettler. When I first started it I did not understand what they were talking about.
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Summary: Well written but a little confusing in spots.
Review: I thought this book was good but when I read it for the Stettler Elem. Book Club I had to take time to read it and really understand it. It a really interesting and exciting.
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Summary: A good book
Review: I wasn't expecting too much out of this book, thank goodness I didn't. This book was better than I thought, but just like the movie, never and can't live up to the original.
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Summary: The Borrowers Reveiw
Review: I've always loved this book, ever since I read it in fourth grade; the thought of little people always appealed to me. The style the book is written in is sort of old-fashioned for today's readers, but if a person can read it, then I definitely recommend it.It's about a type of people, Borrowers, that are very tiny. They live in houses and 'borrow' things, like food, paper, and basically anything that they can get their hands on. They picture people as giants that are put on this earth to make things for them to 'borrow'... They live under floor-boards, behind pictures, over mantles; basically anywhere. That's how Arrietty's mother and father tell it. But, in all reality, there is only herself, her mother, and her father left in that one particular house. Every other Borrower family had emigrated to somewhere else... and Arrietty accepts that until one day she is seen by a boy that puts the thought into her head that maybe her family is the last of the Borrowers. And that's really how it all starts. Arrietty and the Boy form a sort of friendship, where the boy takes a letter to the place where Arrietty's Uncle is supposed to live, and Arrietty reads to him. (The Boy says that he's bilingual, and that's the reason that he can't read well.) And taking the mail isn't the only thing that the Boy does- he also brings the Clocks furniture, food, and other things. Things which are discovered missing later. And that brings in the cat and the rat-catchers... One of my favorite childrens' books; I think the reason I like it so much is that it doesn't take for granted that kids wouldn't be able to understand a longer book... I think that's also what I love about the Harry Potter books, as well. Anyway, read this. Very sweet, very family friendly. Altogether enjoyable.
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Summary: A great book that really makes you believe in what you read!
Review: It's an entertaining book and once you begin to read, it's hard to stop. You really get the feeling of that the persons in the book are alive and real. It's a great book! Read it!
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Summary: read and re-read
Review: Since I was a child I've always been fascinated by stories of Little People and will still read them any chance I get (don't know what this says about me personally!). I even got a copy of this one in Korean, and actually read it (the "bilingual" joke didn't go over at all in translation!)
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Summary: The Borrowers
Review: The Borrowers are people that are five inches tall that live under floor boards. In this book they encounter many adventures such as meeting new friends, migrating, and being chased out of thair house by a cat. I like this book becauseit is exciting and interesting. I recommend this book to kids and adults of all ages.
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Summary: The Borrowers - a many layered classic
Review: The Borrowers is a book for losers. Not the modern kind of loser, but people like me who are always losing stamps and pins and pens. The book tells the story of Arrietty Clock and her parents, tiny people who live beneath the floor of an old house and `borrow' the things they need from the humans who live in the house above. A postage stamp becomes a painting for their wall, pins become knitting needles. Even Arrietty's parents' names - Pod and Homily - are borrowed. Life has never been easy for the borrowers, but now times are changing for the worse. The Sink family in the scullery, the Broom Cupboards, the Rain-Pipes and even Uncle Hendreary and his family have emigrated. Only the Clock family remain, living in fear of Mrs Driver, the housekeeper upstairs. When Pod comes home and says that a boy is living upstairs and that the boy has `seen' him, Pod's wife, Homily, is thrown into panic.
Arrietty, however, is intrigued. While her parents cling to the dubious safety of the life they know, Arrietty wonders about the world outside and dreams of adventure. She persuades her reluctant parents to let her accompany her father on his borrowing expeditions. On her first venture out, she meets the boy upstairs. A dangerous friendship develops. Meanwhile, Mrs Driver stalks the borrowers, full of the sort of cruelty Roald Dahl would have been proud to create. It is only with the boy's help that Arrietty and her parents narrowly escape Mrs Driver's attempts to destroy them. At the end of the book, Arrietty faces the dangerous adventure of emigration.
Like all great books for the young, The Borrowers can be read as an enthralling story of adventure, but also contains many layers of meaning. Mary Norton's creation of the tiny race of borrowers is an imaginative achievement in itself, but she does not stop there. She gives poignance to her tale by telling it through the voice of the boy's sister, now an old lady, who tells us at the start that her brother has long since grown up and died a `hero's de!ath' on the North-West frontier. The old lady seems to believe her brother's tale of the borrowers, and yet at the end of the book she provides evidence to suggest that the borrowers may have been nothing but a product of her brother's imagination. The reader is left wondering about reality and truth. On another level, in the relationship between the borrowers and the human world, parallels with the misunderstandings and confusions which occur between different cultures can be discerned. The uncertainties the borrowers face and their final exile mirror the plight of our world's increasing number of displaced people. Long after the book is finished, the characters and the questions their story raises reverberate around the mind. The Borrowers is a book which will fascinate, intrigue and entertain.
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