The Borrowers（Iwanami Shoten, Publishers. 1965)
Author: Mary Norton
Jacket illustration: Pauline Baynes
Inside illustrations: Diana Stanley
Translation: Yokichi Hayashi
When I was a university student, the elementary school girl I was tutoring read this book as the designated book for the month of her correspondence course and took a Japanese language test. At the time, I thought it was strange because most of the Japanese language tests were based on Japanese novels and stories.
Reading it now, the Japanese translation is excellent, and it is indeed Iwanami.
Also, Homily, Arrietty, and Pod’s diligent sense of life and ethics are solid, and I realize that this was a story with such bases.
As a child, I really liked stories with dwarfs in them.
I have read books like “Nils Karlsson-Pyssling” (Lindgren, Iwanami Shoten) many times. The items and food used by humans suddenly became huge (meatballs, soap cigarettes, etc.), and I was thrilled to see how they could be used in little people’s daily life.
I think this thrill might come from that I believed that small people actually existed somewhere in the world.
(Finish reading: 2023.8.9)
