The Borrowers Study Guide

The Syllabus Series, Week Four: Writing Prompts and a Peek Inside My Dollhouse

About the Syllabus Series

Welcome to the final installment of the Syllabus Series! Over the past few weeks, we have taken a deep dive into Classic Children’s Literature. If you want to know about the Syllabus Series click here. The Syllabus Series is for paid subscribers and includes perks like downloadable reading lists and inspiring posts to take your reading hobby to the next level.

Missed a lesson? Here’s where you can catch-up:

Lesson One: Mary Poppins and Reconnecting with Your Inner Child Through Classic Children’s Literature

Lesson Two: Anne of Green Gables and Reconnecting with Nature

Lesson Three: A Little Princess and Reconnecting with Summers Past

Thanks for joining me on this series. Please let me know if you would like to see more series like this one.

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Photo by Choi sungwoo on Unsplash

The Borrowers in the Attic

My Aunt Kathy always bought my sisters and I the best presents. She had three boys and I think she relished the chance to visit the girl’s section of the toy store. Many of my most beloved gifts were from her.

One of the best gifts I receive was a Sindy doll’s dining room set. It was a beautiful set of in the  French provincial style and came with the most dreamy little plates, cups, and even tiny cutlery. When I think about that toy set, I think about reading The Borrowers by Mary Norton.

My childhood home was a 100-year-old, colonial house in Ohio.

The entire third floor was the attic, which my mother turned into our playroom. We had one entire half of the space (which means half the footprint of the house!). It had two small windows that cranked open and a large, lilac-colored throw rug on the floor. It was freezing cold in the winter and boiling hot the summer and we loved it there. It was our domain and our mother rarely trekked up two stories to see what we were doing. When I read classic children’s literature, like The Saturdays, and their playrooms are described, I think about how lucky I was to have such a space as a child as well.

Although it was very large, the lilac carpet still left a bit of the attic’s wood floor bare. The floor was original to the house and over time, the temperature fluctuations left sizeable gaps between the floor boards and we often lost small toys in the gaps. Slowly, over time, we lost the entire set of tiny cutlery and few dinner plates that came with Sindy’s dining set between the boards. I assume that eventually a subsequent owner of the house finished the attic, and I often wonder what they thought when they pulled up those boards to find a silverware service for twelve, each piece measuring no more than half an inch. It was must have looked as though The Borrowers had been living in the attic. Maybe they did.