Old King Cole is still the smallest children’s book within the Library of Congress, but as of 2007, it no longer held the record for smallest children’s book in the world. Per Guinness World Records, that honor now belongs to the smallest reproduction of a printed book, Teeny Ted From Turnip Town. Written by Malcolm Douglas Chaplin and published by his brother Robert Chaplin, it measures just 70 x 100 micrometers (making it smaller than the head of a pin) and was etched onto a pure crystalline silicon page at Simon Fraser University in Canada at a whopping cost of $15,000. According to Reuters, researchers noted that Teeny Ted From Turnip Town was tinier than two other books cited as the world’s smallest by Guinness World Records: a 2001 copy of the New Testament of the King James Bible and a 2002 production of Anton Chekhov’s Chameleon.

Reading Teeny Ted requires an electron microscope. People obviously find the very existence of Teeny Ted compelling; a 2012 Kickstarter campaign spearheaded by Robert Chaplin asked funders to donate toward making a large print version of the world’s smallest book. The project was funded with extra money to spare. 

As of 2012, Guinness World Records reported that the smallest printed book in the world is Flowers of the Four Seasons, published in a run of 250 copies by Toppan Printing Co., Ltd Printing Museum in Bunkyo, Japan. It measures just 0.74 x 0.75 millimeters, or 0.0291 x 0.0295 inches.