Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio: The Story of a Puppet was first published in 1840 in serial form in the children’s magazine, Giornale dei Bambini. The original story ended at Chapter XV with Pinocchio hanging from a tree, dead at the hands of assassins. The young readers of Italy would have none of it though, for Pinocchio had become their hero. They flooded the magazine with letters begging for more, and so the editor wrote to Collodi demanding that he “resurrect” the puppet. In its final form, the novel sheds its status as a simple morality tale and transfigures Pinocchio’s singular trajectory into the story of every human being—the tremendous and inescapable “adventure” we are all asked to take together. The destination is at once simple and profound: for our end is to become really real.

This timeless tale is so familiar that it is easy to miss the rich significance of Pinocchio’s story—his creation at the hands of the father Geppetto, who, as yet ignorant of the latent spark of life, names this wooden puppet Pino (pine, in Italian) -occhio (eye, in Italian), “a piece of wood with eyes.” Geppetto’s sacrificial love, undying despite Pinocchio’s pride and the puppet’s delinquent disappearance and descent into an underworld of misbehavior and humiliation before, finally, the great reversal with the prodigal Pinocchio’s sacrificial, and saving, acts of love for the man who made him, which quickens his transformation into a real boy at last.

This edition, brought to you through the collaboration of Wiseblood Books and Well-Read Mom, pairs the original story with a commentary by the Italian writer, teacher, and Dante expert Franco Nembrini. By looking broadly and deeply at Collodi’s life, both his personal obsessions and disappointments, and by bringing his poetic vision into tension with the historical and cultural circumstances that existed when he was alive, Nembrini locates the uncompromising truth rooted at the core of this adventure: we were made by and for God, the Father who loves us and seeks us, who forgives us, and waits patiently for our return to him.