Reviews

Never mind the ever-lengthening nose for every lie told or the innocence of a wide-eyed youth facing a scary, unknown world. This is not your childhood Pinocchio. This marionette is selfish, impulsive, flighty, reckless, and downright annoying. And he knows what he’s doing.

Carlo Collodi’s original Pinocchio is not a good boy. He disobeys his father over and over, taking advantage of his kindness and goodwill for his own selfish gains. Even upon seeing the consequences of his actions and after promising to behave, Pinocchio chooses to rebel. This little rapscallion knows the difference between good and bad, and while he may say and intend to be good, he just can’t help being bad.

The Adventures of Pinocchio is nothing but a moral tale for children on goodness, obedience, and the importance of hard work and schooling. Because even though Pinocchio’s adventures are entertaining, Pinocchio himself is too infuriatingly self-centred and predictable to be a sympathetic or interesting character. That the two parent figures in his life continually forgive him and offer him second chances just further irritates. Good riddance with him!

As for the text, this edition was translated by Ann Lawson Lucas. She provides useful notes on the translation, explaining her choices to modernize certain terms or make specific Italian elements more accessible to Western audiences. Many of those changes were unnecessary, since Pinocchio is not a modern tale set in the West. Her translation would have been truer to the original if she’d retained more of the language and ideas of its time and culture. That said, Lucas does discuss some of the original wording in her notes, so I could still get a taste of the writing’s original flavour.

That flavour, sad to say, isn’t very palpable. I was so caught up in despising Pinocchio that the writing itself didn’t stand out to me in either a good or a bad way. The story progresses smoothly at a quick pace, and the characters are vivid and varied. But Pinocchio’s shenanigans overshadow the wordplay and humour Lucas applauds frequently throughout the book. The morals of the tale take all the focus.

In this way, Pinocchio reads like an Aesop fable come to life as a full-length children’s story.