"Little Brown Fox" wrote:Hm, I'm afraid that Arietty is a bit above my ken...
In case it means you've never heard about it before... (Sorry if I'm wrong; my English isn't perfect :shifty
"The Borrower Arrietty" is an animated film by Studio Ghibli based on Mary Norton's "The Borrowers". One of the differences is that the book takes place in Britain, but the film takes place in Koganei, Tokyo.
Twelve-year-old boy Sho (Or "Shawn" in the North American dub; the British dub keeps is original Japanese name) stays at his great-grandmother Sadako's old house in the outskirts of Tokyo due to heart disease, he needs to leave the busy city a bit before the operation a month later.
In Sadako's house he discovers a family of Borrowers - tiny people who make a living by borrowing humans' everyday stuff (tissue paper, sugar, tea leaves, etc.). Arrietty is the daughter in the family and the only child. She is fourteen. Her parents don't like her going outside too often in fear of being discovered by bad humans.
Eventually Arrietty and Sho become friends, but Sadako's nosy housekeeper, Haru, finds out about the Borrowers and plans to catch them and then call the reporters. She suceeds in catching Arrietty's mother Homiri a.k.a. Homily in a jar and locking her in the kitchen storage, but Sho and Arrietty help her out. At the end of the film Arrietty and her family must move away because they have been found by dangerous humans already. So Arrietty says good-bye to Sho, and Sho, apart from telling Arrietty that he will never forget her, he also decides that he will be brave and made up his mind that he will survive the heart operation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzBBIBSi2Vo
The link up there is the trailer of the British Arrietty dub.
I'll check it out whenever I have the chance to. (Still need to finish reading your Tobio story. I somewhat forgot about it. Shame on me! 
)