cover image PINOCCHIO

PINOCCHIO

Carlo Collodi, , illus. by Sara Fanelli, trans. by Emma Rose. . Candlewick, $18.99 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-7636-2261-9

Fanelli (First Flight ) provides abstract illustrations for a deluxe edition of Collodi's cautionary tale. Distilled into pithy chapters by translator Rose, the book comes packaged in a paper-over-board edition with an attractive postmodern slipcase that plays up the hero's famous proboscis. Pinocchio, carved from a talking hunk of wood by his "father," Geppetto, starts life as a careless and gullible marionette. His first impulse is to run away from home, whereupon he falls in with scoundrels, sermonizers and a generous Blue Fairy. This version preserves all the slapstick violence and didacticism of the 19th-century original, in which Pinocchio makes mistakes and develops his moral sense, but the text also plays up a more modern mindset. This picaresque narrative makes a strange partner to Fanelli's up-to-date paper collages and loose pen-and-brush sketches. The artist does not emphasize the contrast between the puppet and his fleshly human and animal acquaintances. Everyone looks equally cartoonish (most often viewed in profile), which on the one hand alludes to Collodi's social satire (hypocritical humans have much in common with ignorant puppets) but on the other hand distances readers from the characters. With its variegated layout and wordless full-bleed spreads, the volume most resembles an artist's handmade book; Fanelli draws on lined or graph paper, and her inset, blue-black ink images seem doodled directly on the pages and margins. This modish treatment, a far cry from conventional versions of the classic, may be best suited to collectors; it makes a likely companion to Lane Smith's Pinocchio the Boy, or Incognito in Collodi . Ages 7-up. (Nov.)