The World of Arrietty the Borrower

“People are good and bad. Some are honest, and some are cunning; their temperaments change according to the situation. If animals could talk, they would say the same thing. Stay away from their path, that's what I was always told. No matter what they promise you, no one has gained good from humans.”

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The novel "The Borrowers" was first published in 1952, winning the Carnegie Medal in the 1950s, followed by four sequels and a short story by Norton. The novel has been adapted into films many times, but the most famous adaptation is the anime film The Secret World of Arrietty, produced by Studio Ghibli and directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi in 2010. Mary Norton wrote the story of the Borrowers, inspired by her childhood strolls in the countryside with her brothers, strolls that filled her with wonder at everything, much to her brothers' annoyance because she would linger and contemplate everything she saw. Or what she didn't see, as young Mary had poor eyesight, which gave her a vivid imagination that made her see things differently from reality! During one of those strolls, it occurred to her to wonder about the nature of life for tiny people who live in houses and "borrow" what they need from their owners. Norton wrote in a letter to a friend just before World War II in 1940: "The world we know has changed, and the memory of the Borrowers returned to me from childhood. Due to tragic abject poverty, men, women, and children were forced to live the kind of life I imagined for the little people. And one realized - without any intentional symbolism - that the world might bring forth people like Mrs. Driver who would not hesitate to harm others."