I say Puppet, and you say Marionette.

Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio: Story of a Puppet

Translated, with an "Introduction" and "Notes", by John Hooper and Anna Kraczyna

Don't let's call the whole thing off...

Like Felix Salten's Bambi: a Life in the Woods, Collodi's story of a wooden puppet that desires to be a real boy comes to us as an English translation of the original Italian.

I had thought to read at least one more translation before writing this post, just for comparison, but, by the time that I'd finished reading this version, that plan was out the window. This version has it all: an excellent introduction, an engaging translation, and a multitude of notes (179!) that offer a deeper understanding of the text. 

Pinocchio is a story for children but it is not a children's book per se. Collodi - more on the man later - really understood and accurately conveyed the impulsive and at times (too many times!) destructive thoughts and actions of the immature psyche and developing mind left free from guidance and restraint. More simply put, the kid was a brat.

In all fairness, the kid was a piece of wood, so maybe some allowances might be made, but, anyway, in a nutshell, here's the story.

A poor carpenter named Master Antonio, called Mr. Cherry, picks up a piece of wood for a little bit of carving, and the wood vocally protests. Mr. Cherry, who hates his nickname, is then visited by his old friend Geppetto, nickname Cornmush, and the two fall into fisticuffs and mutual insults because both believe that the other is calling them by their despised nicknames. The one doing the calling is the talking stick of wood, which ends up going home with Geppetto, and being carved into a wooden puppet named Pinocchio.

Right off the bat, trouble ensues. Pinocchio won't listen to Geppetto, and runs away. When Geppetto finally catches him, the townspeople looking on mistake Geppetto's remonstrances as ill-treatment, and Geppetto finds himself thrown into jail. Back home, Pinocchio ignores the Talking Cricket, who warns him no good end comes to children who disobey their father and refuse to go to school. The Talking Cricket is killed - not deliberately, I'll give the puppet that much - when Pinocchio, in an effort to get him to stop talking - flings a wooden mallet at him.

And the boulder just keeps rolling downhill from there...

Reunited, Geppetto sells his only coat to buy Pinocchio a spelling book so that he can go to school, an action that Pinocchio fully intends to do, until he is tempted by a puppet show, and sells the book for the cost of admission. He avoids becoming firewood for the owner to roast his dinner, and even leaves with five gold coins, which he firmly intends to bring home to Geppetto, but alas, is waylaid again by two tricksters posing as beggars - a Cat and a Fox - who lure Pinocchio away from his good intentions by promising easy money through the planting of the five gold coins in a the Field of Miracles in DoDoLand (you see where this is going) where the five will miraculously multiply to 500, or even 5000 by the next morning.

The end result of this little escapade is Pinocchio hanging from a tree, the Big Oak, by two murderers who bear an uncanny resemblance to Cat and Fox, and is then saved by the beautiful Little Girl with blue hair. Did he learn his lesson? Absolutely not. He was once taken in again by the Cat and the Fox, mocked by a Parrot, and thrown in jail by a judge because he was robbed.

Several more misadventures occur, the beautiful Little Girl appears in a few more iterations, sometimes as a Fairy, sometimes as a Goat, and, living with her at one point, Pinocchio finally does go to school for a while. Right on the cusp of a celebration where he would become a real boy - he really has been very good - he is lured away by his no-good schoolmate Lampwick to a place called Playland, in a cart full of boys the same age and driven by the Little Man and pulled by donkeys. On the journey to Playland, Pinocchio hears voices that warn him of what befalls boys who neglect their schooling, and at one point he tells the Little Man that one of the donkeys is crying. The Little Man tut-tuts the idea and administers his own version of "care" on the offending creature.

Some time goes by, and, lo and behold, Pinocchio turns into a donkey, and is sold in the marketplace to a man who wants to use his donkey hide as a drum. The man ties a stone around Pinocchio's neck and throws him into the sea to kill him. Pulling him out later, he is amazed to find not a dead donkey, but a talking wooden puppet, who jumps back into the water and swims away.

Pinocchio is then swallowed by a giant shark, along with Tuna, and, in his search for a way of escape, stumbles upon poor Geppetto, who had been swallowed two years previous when he took to sea in a small boat in search of the missing Pinocchio. Geppetto has survived these two years by living off the remains of a sunken ship the shark had also swallowed. But now, the supplies were gone, and the lit candle on the table is his last one.

Pinocchio tells his father that they can escape through the shark's mouth. Geppetto protests that he cannot swim. Pinocchio replies not a problem, Dad, just climb on my shoulders and I'll swim for both of us. Candle in hand, the two make their way to the shark's mouth. But when the predator sneezed, it threw them back into his stomach. The candle went out, and in total darkness, Pinocchio led his father back, and, telling Geppetto to jump on his shoulders, leaped out into the sea and began swimming for land.

But land was further away than it looked, and finally, Pinocchio tells his father to save himself, because he is dying. Just in time, the Tuna, also swallowed by the big shark, comes along. The Tuna tells Pinocchio that he escaped the shark by following Pinocchio's example. The Tuna then tells father and son to get on his back, and swims them back to shore.

As the two walk, they come across Cat and Fox, begging by the side of the road having fallen into wretched poverty. They plead with Pinocchio to help them, but Pinocchio refuses, and tells them that they brought their current fate upon themselves.

Coming up to a small hut, they knock, and discover that the Talking Cricket is the owner. (Talking Crickets seem to have nine lives in Collodi's world) and after scolding Pinocchio for his former treatment - no one appreciates getting smashed by a wooden mallet - they settle in. Pinocchio thens goes to work for John Joe, a man who raises vegetables and cows, so he can afford to buy Geppetto a glass of milk. He works every day for five months.

One day, on his way to the market, he encounters Snail, who informs him that that the Blue-haired Fairy is very ill. Pinocchio takes the money he was going to use to buy a new outfit and gives it to the Snail to help the Fairy. He tells Snail that from then on, he'll work extra hours every day to provide not only for his dad, but also his mom, a.k.a., the Blue-haired Fairy.

In a dream that night, the Fairy appears to him, and says because of his kind heart, she will forgive all of his bad behavior up til then. She tells him to use good judgement in the future, and that it will make him happy.

The next morning, Pinocchio wakes up, his straw hut now a cozy little cottage, an ailing Geppetto now hale and hearty, and most important of all, Pinocchio is now a real boy.

And the wooden puppet? Propped up in a chair across the room.

Hopefully, he stays there.

A few thoughts ...

Similar to Bambi, my only exposure to Pinocchio was the 1940 Disney film. I haven't seen Guillermo del Toro's 2022 version or Disney's live-action remake directed by Robert Zemeckis, so I can't make any comparisons between the three. Suffice to say, the 1940 version is a much lighter treatment of the story than the actual book (except for the boys turning into donkeys at Pleasure Island - that was scary as all get out).

In the book, Pinocchio's nose will sometimes grow when he tells a lie, but not always. Nobody in the book breaks into song, and Talking Cricket is a pretty dour fellow compared to the lively Jiminy Cricket.

Pinocchio's world as written by Collodi is one of extreme poverty, where hope for a better future lies in education. 

Collodi, born Carlo Lorenzini in Florence in 1826, fought in both of Italy's Wars of Independence, and witnessed the unification of Italy and establishment as an independent country. As a writer and journalist, he championed the cause of education, and with the enactment of free compulsory education, saw a rise in literacy rate at unification from 25 percent of the populace to almost 40 percent twenty years later.

This was not simply a matter of teaching everyone Italian, because only a minority of the new nation spoke Italian. There were many different dialects and traditions from the different areas, and if you can't speak or read the language, communication between individuals is a serious problem. Several times in the book, Pinocchio and others speak "in dialect", a reference to the situation.

Collodi became disenchanted by the politics of reunification, the Risorgimento in Italian, and starting writing children's books in 1881, the year the first chapter of Pinocchio appeared as Story of a Puppet in the Giornale per i bambini - Newspaper for Children - and ending after 19 installments in 1883. At that point, the stories were repackaged into a book titled The Adventures of Pinocchio: Story of a Puppet.

Collodi's dedication to education shone through in the story. Pinocchio kept falling into trouble because he refused schooling and hung around with unsavory characters. One character after another warns Pinocchio of his dire fate if he remains a virtual blockhead, and Pinocchio suffers numerous consequences as a result when ignoring their advice.

Collodi, in my opinion, really captures the vulnerability of children in making good choices, despite their best intentions. How many times in the book does Pinocchio start out on the right path, the one he knows is correct, be it school or work, and then gets led astray by temptation, in the form of puppet shows or bad companions? Many, many, times. Good choices require education and the hard work of thinking.

At times, through various characters, Collodi delivers his message with the nuance of a sledgehammer, but he is, after all, writing for children. Sometimes, you really do need to lay it on the line.

What keeps these little homilies from getting out of control is Collodi's wonderful imagery of a world of talking puppets, Blue-haired Little Girls that become Fairies, reincarnated Talking Crickets, his humor (there is a lot, some dry, some wry, some much more obvious in Italian), and despite some scary happenings (no one wants to get rolled in flour and fried for someone's dinner), the sheer joy of the story.

Pinocchio is an excellent read-aloud for the intermediate grades and up, and, because it began in serial form, every chapter ends in a cliffhanger, leaving the listeners eager for more. There are thirty-six chapters, most only a few pages long, so you're not looking at a heavy time investment.

I don't know if Italian is still offered in many high schools, but if it is, this book would be a wonderful addition to the curriculum, and particularly this version.

I discovered an 2022 article from Smithsonian Magazine about Pinocchio with a lot of interesting information on the books impact in Italy and about Carlo Collodi. You can read it here.

Coming up next: E. Nesbit's Five Children and It.

Let's try this one more time...

Felix Salten's Bambi: a Life in the Woods

Translated by Hannah Correll

This is not Disney's happy little buckaroo...

Like many children of my generation, along with several generations prior to and many more since, my first exposure to Bambi's story was Walt Disney's 1942 animated film, which was based - loosely - on Salten's 1923 novel.  The only book I associated with the story was a Disney issued picture book using the characters and storyline from the film.  

It was not until last year that I read the original book, and learned something about its author, Felix Salten, born Siegmund Salzmann in 1869 to a Jewish family in Pest, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

Bambi: a Life in the Woods can be, and has been, interpreted in any number of ways. For the instance of its value in a school library, the two most relevant in my opinion are: as an excellent example of nature writing for the intermediate grades, think Brown's The Wild Robot, and in addition, for middle grades and up, an examination of the question of life itself. (I highly recommend Chapter Nine as a jumping-off point for this one, where the remaining fall leaves contemplate the hereafter.)

You can, of course, toss in a few others if you like: the nature of friendship, what it takes to be a leader, feeling different from everyone around you, the nature of mentorship, man versus nature, nature versus nature, and many more. Up to you.

Salten loved the woods and was also an avid hunter. During his lifetime, whenever his fortunes allowed (they tended to wax and wane), he spent his time in woods. This knowledge is reflected in his writing. 

Bambi: a Life in the Woods is the story of Bambi's life from birth, childhood, young adulthood and full maturity as a Prince of the Forest and finally, his status as The Old One. 

 Salten mirrors actions and behaviors in the life cycle of deer along with the changing seasons and environments of woodlands throughout the story, as well as the other woodland creatures. 

As a fawn, Bambi's mother keeps him in a thicket, where they shelter in the daytime and she nurses him in safety. Born in the spring, it is not until the summer that they venture out, Bambi's mother instructing him on on proper behaviors, active at dawn and dusk, venturing out into the forest only at night, and sleeping, hidden during the day.

Bambi is full of questions for his mother, but Bambi's mother is careful never to expose him to more information than his age can handle, but stresses almost from the beginning the need for caution. She explains, in response to his inquiry, that the groups of stags that appear occasionally but don't interact with the rest of them are 'the fathers'. 

The figure that most impresses Bambi, and who also inspires fear, is The Old One, an ancient stag who rarely appears and is thought, by some, to be a myth. 

The Old One is not a myth, his mother explains, but the one who walks paths the others have no knowledge of, and knows all the ways of the forest. The Old One walks alone, and for him, "...there is no danger." 

One of Bambi's question is on the nature of danger, and he discusses it with his friends and cousins, Faline and Gobo, the children of his mother's sister, Ena. They all have theories, but none are prepared for its first appearance, when He appears, with his sharp, distinctive scent, and his third arm from which claps of deadly thunder explode. The animals all flee in terror.

Their second encounter is much more deadly, when a large group of He descend on the forest, killing many creatures, Bambi's mother among them, and wounding Gobo, who is left to die.

Bambi periodically encounters The Old One, whom he fears but also reveres. As a youngster, he was separated from his mother, calling out to her, when The Old One appeared and asked him, Can you not be alone?

It is the role of this aloneness, as a vehicle for growth and wisdom, that appears throughout the book. Bambi's early life is that of any young buck. He fights off competitors Karras and Ronno for Faline, and the two lived happily together for some time, until Bambi feels the need for more solitude, and the two begin to spend less and less time together. It is during these periods of solitude that Bambi gains more wisdom of the ways of the forest, and of life itself.

Bambi will cross paths with The Old One occasionally - it is The Old One who determines these encounters - and once with another Crown Prince, possibly his own father. Unfortunately, neither of them can speak to the other as they desire to, and both leave the meeting unsatisfied.

Gobo returns, to the surprise of everyone and the delight of his mother. Gobo had been rescued from the forest and taken as a pet for a human family. Gobo expounds on how wonderful and kind He is, if only you love and serve him. The others - not Bambi - are enthralled by his story until The Old One arrives, listens sadly, and calls Gobo "unfortunate one." Gobo is later killed when He arrives again, after foolishly going into the meadow in broad daylight after Bambi and the others urge him not to. Gobo has forgotten the knowledge of the forest, and pays the price with his life.

Bambi encounters Faline after a long separation, and tells her that he needs to be alone. Faline departs in sadness, and afterwards Bambi is shot. He runs to safety in the forest, and The Old One appears, and, after forcing Bambi to create a false trail with his still dripping blood, leads him to the safety of his own den. Bambi heals, and from then on, stays with The Old One, who  now allows himself to show more warmth to the younger buck.

Bambi then encounters a squirrel, the grandson of a squirrel that was his friend as a fawn, and learns that the great oak, home to so many creatures, was cut down by He, and the creatures are now homeless. Bambi wants to ask of the others, Faline especially, but does not. the squirrel tells Bambi that he will tell the other that Bambi is still alive, and a Crown Prince.

While Bambi and The Old One are together, they witness a dog tracking down and killing a fox. The fox accuses the dog of being a traitor, and the dog retaliates by killing the fox, but not before claiming that He, man, is all powerful, and that everything they, the forest creatures have, comes from him.

Bambi calls the event dreadful, and The Old One counters that the most horrific aspect is that all the forest creatures as well as the dog believe it, and that they will spend their lives in fear, that they hate Him and themselves, and that they will die because of him.

One day, Bambi hears three claps of thunder. The Old One insists that Bambi follow him to the sight, where they see the body of He, dead. Once he realizes that Bambi now understands that He is not all-powerful, that there is another above all of us and above him, The Old One takes his leave. His time is up, and, he tells Bambi, "... I loved you very much."

Bambi is now The Old One. That summer, he sees a young brother and sister deer calling for their mother. He likes the look of the young male, thinks he might see him again when he's bigger, and the female reminds him of Faline. He approaches the two and says, Can you not be alone?

The two stare at him in silent wonder, and then Bambi turns and disappears into the forest.

It is a wonderful book.

It is also a book we English speakers read in translation, which presents the quandary of choosing the best one. I don't have an answer for you on that, I've only read the version referenced above. (I did a previous post on this question with the book Emil and the Detectives, but for that book I'd read more than one translation. In that case, I found a big difference.)

I found an interesting article specifically on the translations of Bambi. If you're curious, you can read it here, at We Love Translations.

My starting point for most author biographies is Something About the Author. I own a number of the older volumes, but I am also lucky enough to have access through my public library to its database.

The entry for Felix Salten, born Siegmund Salzmann, is not particularly expansive. Bare bones, Salzmann (1869 - 1945) was born in Pest, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Tinto a Jewish family, and died in Zurich, Switzerland. The family moved to Vienna when Salzmann was young, but fell on hard times, and Salzmann never forgot how that felt.

Salzmann worked for a time for an insurance agency, then made his living primarily as a journalist and theater critic, publishing hundreds of articles and writing several novels in the course of his career. He was associated with a the Young Vienna group of writers, a notable member being Arthur Schnitzler, many of whom were Jewish.

Anti-semitism was rampant in Austria, and Salzmann felt its effects. With the rise of the Nazi party, his writings were banned, and the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938 caused Salzmann to flee to Switzerland, where his daughter was living, and where he died in 1945.

An excellent source for information on Salzmann, one that I utilized, is the Introduction written by Jack Zipes  to The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest. Zipes is also the translator, and while I did not read beyond the Introduction, I did admire the illustrations by Alenka Sottler. Beautiful.

I do think, if your approach to the book is as an example of nature writing, that it would be beneficial to do some non-fiction reading on deer before tackling the story, and then drawing on that information while you read.

Returning to my previous comment on Chapter Nine, you could easily, for younger readers, skip that chapter. The chapter is complete in and of itself, and is not essential to Bambi's story. 

Coming up next will be Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio.