Mary Norton

The Borrowers—the Clock family: Homily, Pod, and their fourteen-year-old daughter, Arrietty, to be precise—are tiny people who live underneath the kitchen floor of an old English country manor. All their minuscule home furnishings, from postage stamp paintings to champagne cork chairs, are "borrowed" from the "human beans" who tromp around loudly above them. All is well until Pod is spotted upstairs by a human boy! Can the Clocks stay

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The existence of a family of tiny people called Borrowers living in a house occupied by normal-sized people is threatened when the fourteen-year-old daughter, Arrietty, is discovered by Shawn, the young, normal-sized boy who has come to live with his great aunt.