The Borrowers by Mary Norton

There is an interesting technical aspect of this book that I find interesting in regards to the storytelling. There seems to be two schools of thought on the use of quotations in a long narrative. Some use quotations at the beginning and end of every paragraph. Others treat long narrative as regular writing, only putting quotations around people speaking. Norton follows the second like O’brien’s Rats of NIMH, in that stories are not riddled with quotations. Besides this technical aspect Norton plays on a child’s imagination of small things living among us. Just as children throughout the ages have been fascinated by fairies in Peter Pan, the people of Lilliput in Gulliver’s Travels, and the munchkins of Wizard of Oz; Norton too uses this literary device and children’s fascination to pull the reader in. The characters themselves are interesting all though not very deep, but that matters little for it is the idea of them being small that is more interesting.