If you loved how Arrietty, Pod, and Homily turn every floorboard and matchbox into a whole world—and the tension of keeping their lives secret from Mrs. Driver and the rat-catcher—then you’ll delight in the Mennyms. This family of life-sized rag dolls—Vinetta, Joshua, Soobie, and the rest—live quietly at 5 Brocklehurst Grove, cooking, cleaning, and worrying over visitors just as the Clock family does beneath the floor. The stakes are intimate and domestic: when a landlord plans to visit, every routine becomes a nail-biting stealth mission. Like the scene where the Boy gifts the dollhouse furniture to Arrietty, you’ll find tender, hush‑close moments of care and ingenuity that make an ordinary house feel vast and perilous.

You admired how the Clock family repurposes stamps as artwork and thimbles as kitchenware, and how a single sugar cube is a heist. In The Littles, a tail‑tufted clan living in the walls of the Biggs’ house build pulley systems, use clothespins as clamps, and sneak supplies with the same resourceful flair Arrietty shows on her first borrowing trip. When the human family leaves and a new tenant threatens their setup—echoing the upheaval after the Boy’s discovery—the Littles must re‑engineer their whole world, delivering the same meticulous, delightful detail that made the Borrowers’ home feel real.

If the hush of Arrietty’s meetings with the Boy—and the danger once Mrs. Driver catches on—hooked you, you’ll enjoy how Jared, Simon, and Mallory Grace uncover a hidden world in their great‑aunt’s creaky house. A brownie named Thimbletack, a mysterious book of rules, and goblins lurking outside mirror that same thrill of discovery that begins when Arrietty steps into the garden and speaks to the Boy. Like the Borrowers’ strict code about being seen, the Grace kids learn that knowing the hidden folk brings wonder—and consequences.

You’ll get that same shiver of proximity: magic brushing the everyday, close enough to touch yet perilous if mishandled.

As Arrietty’s secret conversations with the Boy blossom into trust—despite Homily’s fears and Pod’s rules—Tom slips out at night to a garden that shouldn’t exist and befriends Hatty, a girl from another time. Their meetings are as private and precarious as Arrietty passing letters through the grating. The ticking clock, the forbidden encounters, and the tender way a hidden friendship reshapes two lonely children echo the bond that begins when Arrietty bravely speaks to the Boy by the flowerbed.

If Arrietty’s first borrowing, her urgent curiosity about the outdoors, and her courage in meeting the Boy felt like a dawning of self, Mary Lennox’s journey will resonate. At Misselthwaite Manor, Mary discovers a walled garden, befriends Dickon and Colin, and—like Arrietty moving from cramped floorboards to the wide lawn—grows bolder with each secret visit. The way Arrietty’s world expands beyond Pod and Homily mirrors how Mary and Colin bloom as the garden comes alive.