Big and Small

Everything that exists in the world can be classified into two categories: big and small. This simplicity is what makes the world interesting. However, small things get big and big things get small, and sometimes everything seems simultaneously big and small. Our world may seem gigantic at times, and others, as tiny as a button. If we exaggerate a little, we could say this is all we know about it. It is also the only thing we can clearly state about the things of the world: this is big, that is small. When we are presented with a juicy steak and we have a big appetite, we say: "what a small steak!"; when we have a small appetite, we say: "what a big steak!". When we move into an empty house, we say: "what a big room!"; shortly after, when we have filled it with books, children, flies, and harps, we say: "What a small room!".

We always know exactly when things are big or small. Perhaps, if we exaggerate a little, we could say this is all we know. For some time, we are a very small thing that keeps growing until we get big, only to get small again. Just when we think we are big and we can freely move around the world, we realize just how small we really are. The world grows as we learn more about it, but it also becomes smaller. Books, which are relatively small objects, tell us about the things in the world: cows, volcanoes, stars. All these things fit into a book, thus —if we exaggerate a little— we could say that all these things are smaller than the book that contains them.

This collection of books is called Big and Small because some are big and some are small. We do not mention anything about the age and the size of our readers, we are only referring to the size of the books, because, as we have all been able to discover, there are children who are big readers and there are big people who are small, almost insignificant, readers.

Drawing by Artur Heras