The Borrowers is a children’s fantasy novel by Mary Norton about tiny people who “borrow” things from normal humans and keep their existence unknown. Published in 1952, it won the Carnegie Medal for that year, and was selected in 2007 by judges of the CILIP Carnegie Medal for children’s literature as one of the ten most important children’s novels of the past 70 years.

It was followed by a series of sequels recounting the further adventures of the Clock family.

Thirteen-year-old Arrietty Clock lives under the floorboards of a house with her parents, Pod and Homily. As Borrowers, they survive through Pod’s “borrowing” of items from the big people (“human beans” as Arrietty calls them). One day, Pod comes home shaken after borrowing a toy teacup. After sending Arrietty to bed, Homily learns that he has been “seen” by one of the big people - a boy who had been sent from India to live with his great-aunt while recovering from rheumatic fever. Remembering the fate of their niece Eggletina, who wandered away and never returned after (beknownst to her) her father had been seen and the big people had brought in a cat, Pod and Homily decide to warn Arrietty. In the course of the ensuing conversation, Homily realizes that Arrietty ought to be allowed to go borrowing with Pod.

Several days later, Pod and Arrietty go on a borrowing trip to retrieve fibers from a doormat for a scrub brush. Arrietty wanders outside where she meets the Boy. At one point, Arrietty tells the Boy that there cannot be very many of his kind but many of her kind. He disagrees and tells her of times when he had seen hundreds and even thousands of big people all in one place. Arrietty realizes that she can’t prove that there are any other Borrowers left in the world besides her and her parents and is upset. The Boy offers to take a letter to a badger set two fields away where her Uncle Hendreary (father of Eggletina), Aunt Lupy, and their children are supposed to have emigrated. On a later borrowing trip, she manages to slip the letter under the doormat where the Boy agreed to look for it.

Meanwhile, Arrietty has learned from Pod and Homily that when big people approach, they get a “feeling.” 

 Scene from the movie “Anna and the King”
(or The Borrowers)

She’s concerned that she didn’t have a feeling when the Boy approached, so she practices by going to a certain passage over which the cook, Mrs. Driver, often stands. She overhears Driver and the gardener, Crampfurl, discussing the Boy. Driver is annoyed that the boy continually disturbs the doormat and Crampfurl is concerned about him after seeing the Boy in a field calling for “Uncle something” after the Boy asked him if there were any badger sets in the field. Crampfurl is convinced the Boy is keeping a ferret.

Arrietty becomes anxious and sets off on her own to find the Boy. As it turns out, he did find her letter, delivered it, and returned with a response - a mysterious note asking her to tell Aunt Lupy to come back. Pod then discovers Arrietty talking to the Boy and takes her home. Pod and Homily are frightened because the Boy will probably figure out where they live. They turn out to be right but the Boy, instead of wanting to harm them, brings them gifts of dollhouse furniture from the nursery. They experience a period of “borrowing beyond all dreams of borrowing” as the Boy offers them gift after gift. In return, Arrietty is allowed to go outside and read aloud to him.

Driver, in the meantime, notices a few items missing and believes someone is playing a joke on her. She stays up late and almost catches the Boy bringing his nightly gift to his new friends. She does, however, see the Borrowers and find their home. The Boy attempts to rescue the Borrowers but Driver locks him in the nursery. At the end of three days, the Boy is to be sent back to India. Driver cruelly takes him to the kitchen before he goes to see the ratcatcher smoke the Borrowers out of their home. The Boy manages to slip away and break off the grating outside. He never gets to see the Borrowers escape since the cab comes to take him away. However, later, his sister (and the narrator at the beginning and end of the book) is able to go to the badger set and leave gifts there, which are gone the next time she checks. She also finds Arrietty’s diary (though the author creates some ambiguity when the sister mentions that Arrietty’s letters look like her brother’s letters).