Maria del Rio was a small woman who lived in a great big city.  She didn’t like being small at all.  One morning, she had a big idea.  Maria began wearing giant platform shoes, long, striped padded socks, and the tallest flowery hats she could find.  She even considered standing on wooden stilts!  In her new flowery hat and platform shoes, Maria was now taller than any other person she had ever met.

             One fateful day, not long after that, the newly Big Maria was tending her red roses in her backyard garden when she heard a tiny noise.  To Big Maria’s surprise, a small green grasshopper was eating one of her red roses.  This made Big Maria very angry.  She walked over in her big, flowery sunbonnet and tallest platform shoes and snatched up the small green grasshopper in her gloved hand.

            “What are you doing in my garden, you teeny, tiny beast?  Eating my red roses?  I should smash you flat beneath my gardening gloves!”

            “Oh, please don’t smash me!” the grasshopper said, her small voice trembling.  

            “You are a pest.  And a tiny pest, at that!  I do not like little things!”

             “I am exactly the right size,” the grasshopper responded. “I am the size of me.”