Yet Arrietty violates the rules — she’s seen by Shawn (David Henrie of Disney Channel’s “Wizards of Waverly Place”), a sickly boy who has come to stay in the country with his aunt.

Under the title “The Borrower Arrietty,” this film became 2010’s top-grossing film in Japan, and considerable work has been done to make sure that similar success happens in Western territories.

‘The Secret World of Arrietty’ opens in the U.S. Friday, brought to these shores courtesy of Walt Disney Studios.

If you love the Mary Norton books about “The Borrowers,” you’re better off with the swell live-action version from 1997 than the new animated “The Secret World of Arrietty.” Both films ...

The Secret World of Arrietty might not be perfect, but it still manages to tug on our heartstrings before the story's over, even if it's more focused on atmosphere than narrative.

Our entry point into the “secret world” of Borrowers is Arrietty (Bridgit Mendler), a plucky, 5-inch-tall teen living with her family under the floorboards of a house in the country.

"The Secret World of Arrietty" looks to shrink us down, both in size and in age, to a smaller, simpler world where little people inhabit the walls and an empty meadow holds all the promise and ...

In this image released by Disney, the character Arrietty, voiced by Bridgit Mender, is shown with her father Pod, voiced by Will Arnett, in a scene from the animated feature, "The Secret World of ...

The Secret World of Arrietty, about a teeny-size 14-year-old girl who lives with her family beneath the ­floorboards of a big house and the human-size boy who befriends her, is adapted from ...

More notably, they frequently feature plucky young heroines. All those things can be found in TheSecret World of Arrietty, a big screen adaptation of Mary Norton's 1950s novel, The Borrowers.

The Secret World of Arrietty is an animated family fable that's hand-drawn and thus not as flashy as some CGI offerings but that grows on you little by little. And "little" is the operative word here.