Front Matter

Note of Introduction

Ciondolino is the little Italian boy who became an ant and had many thrilling adventures with other ants, and wasps and bees.

Vamba is the clever Italian writer who described these adventures.

We American children ought to be as grateful to Miss Woodruff for introducing Vamba to us as for letting us get acquainted with Ciondolino. For the impossible in Ciondolino's life is such delightful fancy—and so frankly make-believe,—while the possible is so true and so fascinatingly told, that we shall all want to read other boots by this man in far off Italy who knows so well what children like.

To be an ant in size and shape and habits, and to live with ants, and other insects, but all the time to keep the memories and have the mind of a little boy is plainly a combination that promises exciting situations. In Ciondolino's case it succeeded in raising him rapidly to dizzy heights of glory: he became, indeed almost at a leap, Emperor of all the Black Ants; but also it led by a no less dizzy downfall to the state of a forlorn exile wandering, a solitary but adventurous knight, in the exciting world of insect life.

How Ciondolino, who was originally a school-boy who didn't like his lessons, happened to become an ant while his sister became a butterfly, and how after his many adventures with his new relatives in the "noble order of the Hymenoptera" and his discoveries of their curious modes of life, he unexpectedly finds his sister in her new guise, are all told in this book.

What later adventures Ciondolino had in company with his sister in the world of butterflies and moths, Vamba promises to tell in another book. We hope Miss Woodruff will translate this new book for us just as soon as it is written.

And if she does it as simply and judiciously as she has the present one, Vamba ought to find as many readers among the children of America as he already has in Italy. And this is a great many.

Stanford University
        California

To My Little Readers

I have tried, little children, to have you see great things in little creatures. When you are grown up you will see many little things in great creatures.