About the Author

Carlo Collodi (Carlo Lorenzini, 1826-90) was a journalist from Florence who took part in Italy's struggle for independence and died too soon to witness the international success of his children's book.

Reviews

The publisher has timed this unabridged edition of Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio, illus. by Gris Grimly, to hit bookstores just before Roberto Benigni's (Life Is Beautiful) feature film based on the book. Grimly applies the same off-kilter, skewed perspectives that made his Monster Museum so memorable; in his pen-and-inks, Pinocchio resembles a wooden bird with his round belly, twig-like legs, beaky nose and bead-like eyes. A scene of Candlewick and Pinocchio changing into donkeys will likely raise goosebumps. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

K-Gr 4‘To adapt this classic story from the length of the standard versions, thus counteracting the movie images of the Disney animation and the current live-action film, takes an exceptional individual. Young has achieved almost complete success. The artist's note explains his approach; he uses the stock-in-trade of the Italian theater, commedia dell' arte, to capture the slapstick and exaggeration of the adventures. The result is a theatrical and readable presentation with chapters defined as scenes. Overall, the large-format book is attractive, with paper-collage illustrations emphasized with textured surfaces and backgrounds. Edges of shapes are deliberately not glued flat to add dimension and attention to technique. Quibbles are that on some spreads, the black text on dark backgrounds is hard to read, and that details in the illustrations don't always match descriptions in the story. Pinocchio's "little jacket of flowered paper" is a solid green color throughout; on the final page, when Pinocchio turns into a boy, "the bright face of a real boy looked at him with wide-awake blue eyes, dark brown hair..."‘but both are painted black. This picture-book rendition should not replace standard versions such as the Macmillan edition (illus. by Attilo Mussino, 1937, `69), the Macmillan Classics (illus. by Naiad Einsel, 1963), or the Knopf edition (illus. by Roberto Innocenti, 1988). But the combination of the story's popularity with Young's name recognition and appealing cover will draw a large audience.‘Julie Cummins, New York Public Library