We’re reading “The Borrowers.”  It’s a small, quirky book about a family of three miniature people who live under the kitchen floorboards of an old house.  The book was published the year I was born, but I first found it last fall during a trip to New York. The book has chapters, something new for HH, and I have been reading it to him, one chapter at a time for the last week or so.  

When I first brought the book home, he wasn’t interested in having it read to him.  There is only one illustration per chapter and the subject of little people living under the house wasn’t appealing.  So I waited a few months and tried again.  He still wasn’t particularly excited at the idea but one night I just launched into the book and when I reached the end of the second page, I asked him if he wanted me to keep reading.  He gave me an enthusiastic nod, although I could sense he was not completely sure why he wanted to hear more.

The book concerns the lives and adventures of a father, mother and young daughter who are the sole remaining “Borrowers” in a house that had once known three or four such families living behind the walls or under the floors of the house.  One by one, they had been “seen” by one or another of the occupants of the house and decided to move away.  One unlucky character fell victim to a cat that had been brought in for that very purpose.

As the story opens, the father of the family confesses to his wife that he too has been “seen” by a small boy who was in the house visiting his sick aunt.  The language is a little complicated for HH and every now and then I have to stop to explain a word to him.  But otherwise, he is completely taken by the story.  More than once, he has asked me if the little people really existed.  I told him I didn’t think so but that many people over the ages have held such beliefs.  Last night, he asked me if Mama believed in the little people.

I told him he would need to ask her himself.  He asked me when she would be home again and I told him. 

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