I’m happily reading one of my childhood favourites when I suddenly realise how nicely the author has moved the story onwards. I loved The Borrowers as a child, it has one of those magical qualities about it and when I found two sequels in an op shop recently I had to buy them, I used The Borrowers Afloat for Mondayitis recently and am currently reading The Borrowers Aloft.

This book follows on almost immediately from The Borrowers Afloat and they now reside in Little Fordham, a little railway town built in Mr Pott’s backyard. Mr Pott doesn’t care for making money but likes Little Fordham for its own sake while Mr and Mrs Platter have built their own model village to make money. When Mr and Mrs Platter find out The Borrowers have inhabited Little Fordham they devise a plan to kidnap the little people and install them in their own model village as a show piece.

Point 1

What Norton does is to tell us the kidnapping plan by having Mr and Mrs Platter talk it through with the chapter finishing with them going out to their little village to practice it.

Point 2

The next chapter shows Mr Pott and his friend, Miss Menzies, talking about the Clock family (The Borrowers’ name) and how they haven’t seen hide nor hair of them for three days. Mr Pott and Miss Menzies take the extreme step of opening up Vine Cottage to find it empty of people and in a slight disarray as if they’ve gone very quickly, they also realise how drab the cottage is and make plans for brightening it up and installing things useful to the Clocks.

Point 3

This is followed up by taking us into the loft of Mr and Mrs Pott and seeing the Clock family and how they’ve coped with being kidnapped and how they then get control over their own lives again.

Norton has cleverly moved the story on by putting these three points in order. They’re written down quite succinctly with few extraneous words and we understand quite nicely how things have happened without a rehash of the kidnapping from each different point of view. The author hasn’t detailed the kidnapping in multiple chapters as would have happened in other books but you still understand exactly the events and how they affect each person. One of the things I find challenging in today’s books is they’re all big and they have so much detail, I understand some people like and need big books but not everyone does and small books are easier for some readers to read. I could easily give any of The Borrowers books to a primary school child to read and most of them would have the skills but to give them Harry Potter would be quite daunting and those books need a higher level of reading skill as well as far greater stamina.