THE BORROWERS

This perfectly grand fairy story- an English import that won the Carnegie Medal for being the most outstanding children's book in 1952- has the qualities of imaginativeness and the breath of life itself that will endear it to the hearts of all-perhaps in the same way as the Mary Poppins stories. It is about the borrowers, a species of small people who are dying out because of the disappearing conditions under which they can thrive. For their ""Borrowing"" they need quiet old houses whose inmates live in such a way that they will let a family like Pod, Homily and Arrietty Clock, about the size of a pair of scissors, bo about collecting their needs without being seen. Kate, a modern girl, learns about them from old Mrs. May whose brother went to the country when he was a boy, met Pod, Homily and Arrietty and tried his best to save their home behind the old grandfather clock from the ruinous clutches of the housekeeper. Ultimately the best he can do is to help them escape to the fields- a precarious but not hopeless fate for them. A delightful land of maybe and the richness of detail and character study in Beth, and Joe Krush's drawings will have even the most doubtful hunting high and low.