DISCOVERIES

THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO, Story of a Puppet, By Carlo Collodi, Translated from the Italian by Nancy Canepa , Illustrations by Carmello Lettere, Steerforth Italia: 209 pp., $12.95

PINOCCHIO, By Carlo Collodi, Translated from the Italian

by M.A. Murray, Illustrated by Gris Grimley , Tor: 221 pp., $15.95

Powerful stories are often twisted and kneaded (sometimes beyond recognition) in various media and by new generations of artists and writers. “Pinnochio” first came to life in the hands of Carlo Collodi in 1881. It was serialized in a children’s magazine, Il Giornale dei Bambini, and went on to be translated into 100 languages.

It is also in the nature of great stories that they possess a generous capacity for interpretation; some see Pinocchio as a hero fighting to become real in a world of stale and callous grown-ups, an Italian Huckleberry Finn. For others, it is a morality tale: “Why It Is Important to Be Good,” “How the Good Are Tested,” “What Are the Ingredients of Goodness?” and “What Happens to Those Who Are Bad?” These have always been the conflicting messages of children’s literature: Don’t listen to the big people, they’re just crazy, or if you don’t listen to the big people, you’ll end up, as Collodi’s blue fairy said, “in hospital or prison.”

Nancy Canepa’s is a very intimate translation, and it feels more like literature than theater, which is important, because most of us have seen “Pinocchio” performed; we have not read it. Hers is not a cartoon or a simple morality tale. In the background of her world is poverty and cruelty and violence. In a tossup between a more sophisticated word and a more visual word, she will choose the more complex: Tuna instead of Tunny (the fish Pinocchio meets in the belly of the whale), “casket” instead of “stretcher,” a nose that is “purple” rather than simply “red.”

The Tor edition is more popularized, uses simpler language and presents Pinocchio more as a naughty imp with a slight chance of redemption than as a poor child lost in a cruel world. Carmello Lettere’s illustrations are more arty, with background and foreground. In Gris Grimley’s very imaginative, almost frightening drawings, there is only foreground; Pinocchio has altogether less personality in the Grimley drawings.

Here’s an example of the nuances of translation. From M.A. Murray: “Woe to those boys who rebel against their parents, and run away capriciously from home. ... [S]ooner or later they will repent bitterly.” From the Canepa translation: “Woe to those children who rebel against their parents and who abandon their homes to indulge their whims. ... [S]ooner or later they will have to face a bitter repentance.” To which Murray’s Pinocchio replies: “Sing away cricket!” Canepa’s lesser rogue replies: “Go ahead and sing as you will and wish, my dear Cricket.”

But in these new editions of this classic tale, there is little symbolic embellishment. Every time you read this story you feel differently about it, which is another mark of a great story. It reflects the culture and the face of your child.

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THE CHILD THAT BOOKS BUILT: A Life in Reading, By Francis Spufford , Metropolitan Books: 214 pp., $23

THE BOOK THAT CHANGED MY LIFE: Interviews With National Book Award Winners and Finalists, Edited by Diane Osen, The Modern Library: 184 pp., $12.95

WHAT IS A BOOK? By David Kirby, University of Georgia Press: 208 pp., $19.95 paper, $44.95 hardcover

Some writers, like Francis Spufford, admit to being addicted to books the way some are addicted to soap operas. Many writers interviewed by Diane Osen admit that certain books have shaped their style. David Kirby remarks on the powerful ability of books to create divisions in academia and among readers. Spufford, whose book is the most personal, is awed by the amount of information a child absorbs and by all the questions a child has about how to live that are answered by books.

“The association between books for children and autonomy for children is very strong,” he writes. It gives him comfort, in adulthood, to see his own life as a story.

Osen’s interviews are a similar homage to books: Grace Paley speaks of the “relief of fiction”; Phillip Levine tells how the poems of Wilfred Owen helped him as a young man to feel “normal” in the world of the 1940s. Kirby’s book is full of interesting principles, hard-earned on the front lines of academia: “Devotion is more important than dissection” and “Practice is more important than theory.”

Critical writing is better when it is done by a critic who is also a writer, if only he did not refer to himself as “a professional reader.” The very idea makes Collodi turn in his grave and makes puppets of us all.