By now, we know that dolls arent just toys. Or, they are toys, but theyre also caught up in a web of ideas about beauty and self-esteem , and can covertly teach kids about the world and who it values.

Its precisely this knowledge, which has been confirmed in dozens of analyses and studies , that animates one Brazilian grandfathers incredible craft: as CTV News explains , the 64-year-old man crochets dolls with different body types, skin disorders and visual impairments.

It started with his granddaughter, Isabella. Joo Stanganelli Junior has lived with vitiligo a disease that causes loss of skin pigment in blotches for nearly half his life, he told CTV, and he started thinking that he wanted to give Isabella something to remember him by.