Tiny

Tiny

Laura Stitzel

Walker Books, 2026

32pp., hbk., RRP $A24.99

9781760658571

I’m tiny. Too tiny. I’m really too small.
The world is so big. The people so tall.
There’s nothing to do down here on my own,
But wait for the day when I’ve finally GROWN.

She’s like many children who see their older siblings able to do all sorts of things, being left out because she isn’t quite big enough yet, and she longs for the time she is big enough to do them too. That is until the day she sees a baby possum on the ground, having fallen off its mother’s back with no way for it to climb back or mum to come to rescue it.  What if, somehow, she shrank to the size of the baby possum? What would the world look like from that perspective?  And then what if she shrank again?  And again?

Could being the size she is, be just the right size for now?

This is an engaging and intriguing book that has the potential to change a child’s perception about being a child because it celebrates all the things that are possible because they are small – all the things they can see and do and appreciate because they have the time to imagine and wonder in a way that adults weighed down by life’s pressures seem to forget how to do.  Getting to the supermarket between work and home is much more pressing than saying hello to the always-busy bee, while stopping to lift that baby possum up rather than steeping on it unseen, and creates a memory forever. Being tiny doesn’t mean being powerless, and while it might mean being invisible and ignored by the BIG people, it’s just right for being, doing and discovering so many other important things.

With its glorious illustrations, little ones will not only have fun sharing the journey but perhaps look around them and see who they might see if they shrank, and shrank again.  Lots of scope for learning about comparison and its associated vocabulary! They might even explore Bill Martin Jr’s poem “What is Big? in Sounds of Numbers. (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston; First Edition, January 1, 1966)…

What is Big?

My name is Tommy

I am not very big

I am not as big as a goat

A goat is bigger than I am

I am not as big as a horse

A horse is bigger than I am.

I am not as big as a n elephant

An elephant is bigger than I am

I am not as big as a whale

A whale is bigger than I am.

I am not as big as a dinosaur

A dinosaur is the biggest thing I know. 

They could substitute Martin’s choice of objects to build a new version and then create another substituting “small’ for “big”, having new adventures similar to the little girl’s.  Or consider A. A. Milne’s The End  focusing on and appreciating the things they can do now that they couldn’t do a year ago!