It’s the birthday of British children’s book author Mary (Pearson) Norton (1903-1992, #nicelonglife), best known for her series on the Borrowers, a race of tiny people six inches tall who live secretly alongside humans and “borrow” from them. The original book, The Borrowers (1952), won England’s Carnegie Medal, which recognizes outstanding books for children, and on the Carnegie Medal’s 70th anniversary, The Borrowers was chosen by popular vote in the UK as one of the top ten most beloved Carnegie winners. (Winner of the top ten was Northern Lights by Philip Pullman, 1995.)

Norton was born and raised in London in a Georgian house in Leighton Buzzard, a town in Bedfordshire. Norton was nearsighted, and she once said in an interview that “I think the first idea—or first feeling—of The Borrowers came through my being shortsighted: when others saw the far hills, the distant woods, the soaring pheasant, I, as a child, would turn sideways to the close bank, the tree roots, and the tangled grasses.” She would imagine “small, fearful people picking their way through the miniature undergrowth.”

Norton attended a convent school in London and then trained with the Old Vic Shakespeare company as an actress. (She and her brothers put on plays growing up.) Norton married Robert Norton in 1926, and they and their four children lived in his native Portugal until WWII, when Norton and the children returned to London. It was while working for the British Purchasing Commission in New York during the war that she began to write. Her first novel, The Magic Bed-Knob, was published in 1945 and is set during the bombing of London: thanks to a magic bed-knob, three children are able to travel anywhere they wish. A sequel, Bonfires and Broomsticks, came out in 1947 and The Borrowers several years after that, to universal acclaim. (Do you need a gift idea for a child just now? You’re welcome.) The Borrowers follows the Clock family, who live in a house probably based on the Georgian house Norton grew up in.

Norton’s novel Are All the Giants Dead? (1975) is about the lives of famous fairy-tale characters spinning out after their big adventures are over; it has been called “as brilliant, beguiling, and original as could possibly be wished” (Margery Fisher, British critic). Norton’s last Borrowers book was The Borrowers Avenged (1982), which contains satire on modern British life that the earlier books did not.

Norton wrote at least 200 words a day to stave off blank-page syndrome. She died of a stroke at 88 at her home in Hartland, England, which, all things considered, sounds like a pretty good way to go.

Have a whimsical Tuesday insofar as it’s feasible and stay scrupulously honest to the data.