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Welcome to this theater, where you will see the mischievous Pinocchio, barely a chunk of wood, dare to run away from his own sweet father, who only wants the best for him. You will be amazed that he turns his back on a kind cricket, and more amazed that, instead of going to school, he takes up with the dastardly Fox and Cat, who promise him thousands of gold coins. As if all that were not enough, your breath will be taken away when you see - just as he is about to become a real boy - this Pinocchio decide to run away with the Lost Boys and turn into... Well, you will see what he turns into. And you will see how upon being swallowed by Dogfish he is given one last chance to find his way to his papa, and to his home. Ed Young's version of this classic tale is like no other, valuing Collodi's original text and giving it full and hearty play upon the stage of his unique art. This is a book for lovers of puppets and children and adventure everywhere. This is not Disney's watered-down and water-logged *Pinocchio* -- this is the book that has the real stuff, and if children like the Disney movie, it's because they're getting a hint of the wonders of Collodi's book. First: my five year old insisted I read this book to him twice in a row. Yes, I left out the part where Pinocchio actually bites off the paw of a cat and spits it out, but my boy revelled (from the safe distance of bed and sippy cup in hand) in the assassins who pursue Pinocchio, try to kill him, and leave him swinging from a tree. The incidents in this book are highly evocative: a little girl announces that all the people in a house are dead (she included); rabbit undertakers appear when Pinocchio won't take his medicine; Pinocchio is almost fried as a fish (and drowned, and hanged, etc.). There's a talking cricket, but he's annoying and, happily, does *not* burst into song. Second: This book centers around dream-logic. The book makes mechanical gestures towards cause and effect, but it really works the way a child thinks and the way a child worries -- it reassures a child that not everything that happens is reasonable. Perhaps Collodi meant this book to be moralistic -- certainly there are lessons constantly to be learned. But that the least of this text: this is a story about a boy who can't quite be a boy because he's naughty and disobedient, and he finds it isn't easy *not* to be naughty. Grown-ups have all sorts of rules, and a lot of them don't make much sense. After all, we all come into this world not yet human, and we all struggle to figure out what is expected of us.
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