Preact, Mithril, Zod, etc. There are plenty of projects that have remained relatively light by saying “no” repeatedly to things which are outside their scope or would introduce unwarranted bloat.
You're doing something wrong. I just tested now. Preact 8.5.0 is 3.2kb minified+brotlied. Preact 10.8.2 (latest) is 3.7kb. That's a very small increase.