The Littles

When the first edition of John Peterson’s The Littles hit the market in 1967, the landscape of children’s literature was on an evolutionary trajectory as shaped by the Golden Age of Children’s Literature that occupied the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. The Littles’s clearest literary influence comes from English author Mary Norton’s 1952 children’s novel, The Borrowers, which also features a family of tiny people who secretly inhabit the walls of a big family’s home. Like the Littles, the Clock family from The Borrowers also relies on borrowing or otherwise salvaging items from the larger host family they live with. The Borrowers went on to have four published sequels, the latest of which hit shelves in 1982, 21 years after the previous installment in 1961 and in the wake of the success of The Littles series.

The Littles debuted to critical acclaim, and two sequels were published the following year in 1968: The Littles to the Rescue and The Littles Take a Trip. John Peterson went on to write 15 independent Littles titles, with his final Littles novel releasing in 2003, one year after his death. In the 1980s, other authors took on the expansion of the Littles’ literary universe alongside an animated television adaptation produced by media company DIC Entertainment.

The Littles animated television series ran for three seasons, airing between 1983 and 1985 on ABC Saturday Mornings. The series also received two movie tie-ins and aired reruns on the DIC Kids Network as late as 2003. In the television series, Tom and Lucy Little are the main characters, and Mr. and Mrs. Little’s names have been changed to Frank and Helen Little. Additionally, the television series adapts Uncle Pete into the Grandpa Little character, who is Helen’s father. Although The Littles and its sequels never define the Little family tree, the television series makes the relationship between each Little family member explicitly clear. Another large change made by the television series is the incorporation of Henry Bigg as a major character. In the novels, no member of the Bigg family ever becomes aware of the Little family, but the television show’s premiere establishes that Henry Bigg is already aware of the Little family. This story is expanded upon in the first movie tie-in, Here Come the Littles (1985), which functions as a prequel to the television series.

The legacy of literature like The Littles and its influences lives on in modern children’s media, where small humanoid or human-acting creatures navigate macro worlds and interact with—or avoid interacting with—normal-sized humans who may or may not be allies. Media that falls into this genre of small people in a big world includes other classic children’s tales like Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story series, the Honey I Shrunk the Kids movies and television series, and other 1980s children’s novels like Lynne Reid Banks’s The Indian in the Cupboard (1980). Young readers’ fascination with a small world hiding within their own is timeless, and it has proven its adaptability across several mediums, even appearing as a motif within video games like the Little Big Planet series and Yoshi’s Crafted World.