“You’ll grow up to be a real jackass”
Pinocchio was initially serialized and, once upon a time, concluded with Pinocchio’s violent death before Collodi, at the request of his publisher, then extended the story and had the Beautiful Girl with the Sky-Blue Hair (whom Disney made the ‘Blue Fairy’) save him. If you have never read his tale and are expecting Disney’s version, you’ll be in for a shock. Instead, you can expect—as but one example of its bloodshed—cricketcide: When Pinocchio meets the Talking Cricket in chapter four and tells him he doesn’t want to study in school, the cricket tells him he’ll ‘grow up to be a real jackass’ and the source of everyone’s derision, later calling him a ‘blockhead.’ Then, Pinocchio jumps up in a rage and smashes the Talking Cricket with a wooden mallet. ‘With his last breath the poor Cricket cried cree-cree-cree and then died on the spot, stuck to the wall.’
Jiminy who?
—Fulvio Testa’s illustrated version of Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, recommended in Kirkus Reviews by Julie Danielson as a “Gift for the Fairy Tale Lover in Your Life.”
