The title might remind you of “Gulliver’s Travels” by Jonathan Swift. These two stories have a few things in common. However, “Lilliput” is about Lily, a tiny Lilliputian girl, who goes on a big adventure.
Gulliver’s unusual travels have proven to be only bedtime stories for children... until one day. The giant returns to Lilliput, finds Lily on the beach and takes her back to his house in London. The little girl hates Gulliver and all the other giants (or yahoos, as she calls them). She tries to escape a lot of times, but none of her plans work. Escape Plan Thirty-Three works a whole lot better than the others, though, as Lily manages to get out of a birdcage and fly away from Gulliver’s attic, using two bird feathers. The Lilliputian is finally free... But, unfortunately, her happiness doesn’t last for too long:
“Gulliver saw his chance. With a desperate lunge he launched himself half out of the window. (...) Before Lily could wriggle free of the knots that tied her to the feathers he yanked her back inside.” (pages 34-35)
Gulliver always tells Lily that he is a man of science and reason, not a kidnapper. The Lilliputian is his proof of all his travels, not his prisoner. But the girl knows the truth. Not only is she trapped in a city full of giants, but also a prisoner of her own mind full of questions.
One day Gulliver finds some sleeping drops in his coffee cup and, of course, drifts off to sleep. Lily doesn’t know who is responsible for this. After a while a young boy comes into the attic, holding a tiny piece of paper. It’s Lily’s note, which was tied up to a mouse’s tail a long time ago:
“It worked, she thought numbly. After all this time, Escape Plan Twenty-One... actually worked. This boy found my note!”(page 76)
At first Lily doesn’t trust the boy, as she has no idea where he has come from and what he would do with her. She takes a closer look at him from her hiding place. She notices a special watch attached to him (if the boy was wasting time, the watch would tighten his wrist, causing him a lot of pain) and finally remembers who he is.
When Lily and Gulliver arrived in London, the boy found them and told them that he needed help. His master, a clock maker called Mr. Plinker, was hurt. Gulliver was a doctor, but Lily was the only one who could treat the clock maker’s wound. She saved Mr. Plinker’s life (while he was sleeping) and in exchange, the clock maker offered them a place to stay: the attic in which Gulliver could write his Book of Travels.
The mysterious boy is the clock maker’s apprentice. Lily thinks he’s as cruel as his master, but her thoughts turn out to be wrong. After she leaves her hiding place, the girl looks at the stranger’s eyes and reads his thoughts as if they are the pages of a book:
“She saw the boy’s name. It was Finn. Finn Safekeeping. And all of Lily’s worries about him fell away then, because she could see that Finn wasn’t here to hurt her, or snatch her, or bleed her dry with leeches. He had come to set her free.” (page 88)
Finn and Mr. Ozinda (a Spanish owner of a chocolate house) work together in order to get the little girl back home. But where is Lilliput? How can Lily get there? Two unexpected people have the answers:
“ ‘If I am right,’ Mr. Ozinda said, ‘we must look in this book of travels. There, Gulliver will have written exactly where he discovered Lilliput. Perhaps there will even be a map.’ ” (page 169)
“Finn gasped. (...) ‘I know just the bird we need. A swift. (...) And I know where we can find him – he’s in Mr. Plinker’s workshop, trapped in the Astronomical Budgerigar...’ ” (page 173)
The story has many intense moments. Mr. Plinker turns out to be a cruel man with no heart and soul. When you think everything is going according to the plan, something bad and unexpected comes along... Gulliver’s death is probably the most shocking part throughout the story. Before he passes away, he realizes he has been very mean to Lily and feels sorry for taking her away from her island.
In the end the little girl gets back home, in Lilliput. Lily and Finn remain close friends, regardless the long distance between their homes. This is true friendship, without a doubt!
We’ve seen the Lilliputian island through Gulliver’s eyes. Now it’s time to discover the giants’ world from Lily’s perspective...
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