When I was a kid I read some of the Littles books- at least the first three or four. Not far into the series though, because I don’t remember there being any other Little people families, and this mentions several. It was familiar enough to me that right away I recalled the names of the main characters- Tom and his sister Lucy, the ex-soldier Uncle Nick, the dashing pilot Cousin Dinky, etc. I have this book because when my kid was cleaning out their collection of things that they’d outgrown years ago, I kept some. A Littles book I hadn’t read.
It was plenty fun and a good read, even though I have a gap, not having read quite a few volumes that preceded this one, and having forgotten a lot of the earlier volumes too. The Littles are tiny people that live between the walls of people’s house, using things they find and collect- like a matchbox for the baby’s bed, a thimble for a bucket, etc. I always thought this was super clever and fascinating when I read the other books as a kid. This volume starts off immediately with an adventure- young Tom Little is on the roof with his Uncle Nick and Dinky. They’ve rigged up a discarded party balloon to be a hot-air balloon, but something goes wrong with their test flight- Tom and Uncle Nick end up flying away without Dinky, off-course. They go far beyond their normal range, but manage to crash land without getting injured- finding themselves on top of a hillside in a secluded area where to their surprise, there’s another family of “tinies”. These tinies wear old-fashioned clothes and speak oddly and have a different value system- men and women’s work strictly segregated, and girls in particular forbidden to do all sorts of things, expected to be demure and well-behaved. Tom befriends the daughter of the family, who is not at all demure- she’s smart and quite adventuresome (which gets her into trouble). Tom doesn’t want to upset the order of things, but also doesn’t like seeing her spirit squashed. Well, the other tiny family is welcoming and with some help they get their balloon repaired. The isolated tinies are surprised to hear news from the modern world, while they have a few things on their farm that astonish Tom and his uncle as well. When they get home, Tom and Lucy have their own little adventure exploring in the woods- there’s chipmunk encounters in dark tunnels! I loved the references to some children’s literature, and Lucy’s desire to make a secret garden and how she did that- but disappointed the story didn’t explore that any further, once she had planted some flowers it wasn’t mentioned again. Their family eventually connects with the isolated tiny farm family again, and there’s a happy ending for all.
It was sweet and fun. And of course now I’d like to read other Little books, plus The Borrowers too, which I never got into.
