Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The Borrowers (Gift Book) by Mary Norton, Michael Hague ISBN: 0-15-209991-3 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: October, 1991 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.59 (34 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Borrowers - a many layered classic
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: Enchanting
Comment: Unknown to the humans who seem to rule the Earth, they actually share the world with a race of little people, the Borrowers. Living beneath the floorboards, and anywhere else they can remain unseen, the Borrowers live by "borrowing" what they need from the "human beans." This is the story of one family (Pod, Homily and Arrietty Clock), their life in a spacious home, their borrowing, and their efforts to stay unseen. But Arrietty wants to see what else there is to life, and she is going to see it!
This is such a wonderful book. The story is charming, with the illustrations showing a realistic (if tiny) family. My children loved this story, and even have developed some games based on the story. If you have children, then please consider buying this book for them.
Rating: 3
Summary: Story Student
Comment: The Borrowers is a really good book. Borrowers are little people who live in the bottom of peoples houses and borrow their things. There is a family called the Clocks. There are worried and lonely for other Borrowers! Are there any borrowers left in the world? On day they go out, and they try to find any other Borrowers. Then they run into a cat! The cat grabs Mrs. Clock, and I recommend this book for all its joy and charm, and the author wrote this book for the short people of the world.
 |
Title: The Borrowers Afield by Mary Norton, Beth Krush, Joe Krush ISBN: 0152047328 Publisher: Odyssey Classics Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
 |
Title: The Borrowers Aloft: Plus the short tale Poor Stainless by Mary Norton, Beth Krush, Joe Krush ISBN: 0152047344 Publisher: Odyssey Classics Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
 |
Title: The Borrowers Afloat by Mary Norton, Beth Krush, Joe Krush ISBN: 0152047336 Publisher: Odyssey Classics Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
 |
Title: The Borrowers Avenged by Mary Norton, Joe & Beth Krush ISBN: 015204731X Publisher: Odyssey Classics Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
 |
Title: The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden ISBN: 0440415632 Publisher: Random House Children's Books Pub. Date: 15 September, 1970 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
