Antonio on the Other Side of the World, Getting Smaller

...buy this book for your girl or boy! I have just had the pleasure of reading [and buying] this book about little [and littler, and then bigger] Antonio. It is a great book. And I am 43 years old, [as of yesterday, in fact!] Often, children's books have very powerful family images, within them. And that is all well and good if the child that reads them is a son or daughter of a mother-father parental team. But what if they aren't? For this Christmas season I have been exploring the bookstores for good gift ideas for a single mother's daughter. A daughter that loves books. This particular mother has enough moments in any given week where the issue of "where is my daddy?" becomes.... an issue requiring an answer. Why make a child's reading experience yet another such occassion? Well, in this book by Malachy Doyle, little [unexplainably shrunken] Antonio meets a ship's captain, a train engineer, and a cowboy. All of them male, none of them father [per se]. Perfect. The significant adults in his life are a grandmother and a mother. It is a wonderful story with beautiful illustrations by Carll Cneut. Love from his mother makes Antonio grow up to be big and strong.