Pinocchio

The old wood-carver Geppetto decides to make a wonderful puppet which can dance & turn somersaults, but by chance he chooses an unusual piece of wood. The finished puppet can talk & misbehave like the liveliest child. But Pinocchio is brave & inquisitive as well as naughty. After some hair-raising adventures, he earns his heart's desire. Though one of the best-known books in the world, Pinocchio at the same time remains unknown-linked in many minds to the Walt Disney movie that bears little relation to Carlo Collodi's splendid original. That story is of course, about a puppet who, after many trails, succeeds in becoming a "real boy." Yet it is hardly a sentimental or morally improving tale. To the contrary, Pinocchio is one of the great subversives of the written page, a madcap genius hurtled along at the pleasure and mercy of his desires, a renegade who in many ways resembles his near contemporary Huck Finn.