Author. She received world-wide acclaimed as an award-winning English author in the 20th century, excelling in children's books with a four-book series on the Borrowers, a family of resourceful miniature beings measuring only 6 inches tall, who secretly shared an old country house with humans. These little beings received the name “Borrowers” as they entered the human's living space from under the floor through a tiny door under the clock then borrowing whatever they need to survive. This continued until the teenage daughter of the little beings, Arrietty, became friends with the young human boy, hence many adventures started. In 1952 Norton received the Carnegie Medal in Children's Literature for the first in the series, “The Borrowers.” The Carnegie Medal is the oldest and most prestigious award offered for children's books in England. In 2007 the Carnegie Medal celebrated its 70 th Anniversary, and “The Borrowers” series was listed in the top ten favorites of all the winners, and received two American literary awards, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award Book and the American Library Association Distinguished Book. Besides the award-winning first book “The Borrowers,” the other books in the series are “The Borrowers Afield” in 1955, “The Borrowers Afloat” in 1959, and “The Borrowers Aloft” in 1961. “The Borrowers Afloat” was on the shortlist for receiving the 1959 Carnegie Medal. Shortly after being published in England, her little beings series was published in the United States. Her tales of these little beings were adapted for television in the 1970s and 1992. “The Borrowers” was adapted into United States films in 1973 by Hallmark Productions; 1997 starring as a giant human, John Goodman; in 1993; and most recently in 2018 as an animated cartoon. A Japanese animated film version, “The Secret World of Arrietty,” was released in 2010. With generations of children enjoying these classic books, a fifth book for the sequel, “The Borrowers Avenged,” was published in 1982 and the complete series of all five was republished in 1983. Born Kathleen Mary Pearson, she spent her childhood in a large Georgian manor house in Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire, which could have been the setting for her Borrowers books. The house is marked as her home with a British Blue Plaque. The only daughter of five children, her father was Reginald Spencer Pearson, a physician and surgeon, and her mother the former Mary Hughes. She attended St. Margaret's Convent School, a business school, and studied acting with the Old Vic Shakespeare Company for two years. In 1926 she married Robert Charles Norton, the son of a shipping tycoon, and the couple relocated to his parent's estate in Portugal, staying until 1939. Soon she became the mother of two sons and two daughters. During World War II, she held a position at the War Office while her husband, as an engineer, was in the Navy. She and three of her children relocated to the United States, where she held a position with the British Purchasing Commission. While living in New York in the middle of the war, she began her writing career in 1943 with her first novel, “The Magic Bed Knob.” She returned to London 1943 and accepted a sixteen-month engagement as an actress in the play “Guinea Pig” at the Criterion Theatre from 1946 through 1947. “The Magic Bed Knob” was later successfully republished with the 1947 sequel, “Bondfires and Broomsticks.” Both books were republished in 1957 as one volume. Walt Disney Productions made their version of her book, “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” which was released in the start of the 1971 Christmas season at Radio Music Hall in New York City. The film received five Academy Award nominations, winning “Best Special Visual Effects.” She wrote a popular humorous story about aging fairy-tale characters, “Are All the Giants Dead?” in 1972. In 1971 she published a short novel about the Borrowers, “Poor Stainless.” In 1998 a collection of fifteen adult short stories, “Bread and Butter Stories,” was published; these stories had been originally published in magazines between the 1930s and 1950s. Her books were beautifully illustrated: “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” by Erik Blegvad, The five original Borrowers books, numerous reprints and special editions over 30 years were illustrated by Diana Stanley, the husband and wife team Joe and Beth Krush, and “ Pauline Baynes. The illustrators have an important role in making children's books successful. On April 24, 1970 after her first marriage was dissolved, she married for the second time to author and playwright, Lionel Bonsey. As an elderly widow, she died suddenly from a stroke. The couple is buried together sharing a upright marker with most of American poet, Mary Elizabeth Frye's poem “Do not Stand at My Grave and Weep” inscribed on it.