Borrowers Afloat

By now, the borrowers, those infinitesimal creatures, who look like people and live off the crumbs from the human world, are well established in the world of fantasy. Life is sweet for the borrowers as long as Tom and his grandfather live their normal lives in the big old house which shelters Pod, Homily, Arrietty and their relatives. But when they learn that the house will be closed, once more the borrowers face the inevitable starvation which occurs whenever there are no humans from whom to borrow. There is much anxiety, with each little borrower reacting in his sharply characteristic way, but happily, in the end, the entire clan take off in a pencil box and sail down river to a new and secure home. Mary Norton, in her earlier books, masterfully created a miniature world which is sustained in this latest sequel. Every aspect of it is sharply defined, and the borrowers continue to contain, within their diminutive forms, that concentrated essence of personality which makes them, if less than life size, somewhat more than human. (Kirkus Reviews)