Retold from: Carlo Collodi

Carlo Collodi was an Italian writer and journalist, the author of “The Adventures of Pinocchio”, about a wooden puppet who dreamed of becoming a real boy.

His real name was Carlo Lorenzini. He was born in Florence in 1826, took part in the wars for Italian unification and published satirical newspapers. He took the pen name Collodi from the Tuscan village where his mother came from. Collodi died in Florence in 1890.

“The Adventures of Pinocchio” began to appear in 1881, in instalments in a children’s magazine. The author first meant to end the story at chapter fifteen, but readers asked for more so eagerly that it grew to thirty-six chapters. It came out as a single book in Florence in 1883, and has since been translated into hundreds of languages.

The site has “Pinocchio”: how a wooden boy runs away from lessons, makes promises he does not keep, and step by step learns to be honest and kind.