Pinocchio

The original is MUCH more interesting than the Disney cartoon, or the various children's stories that start with the Disney cartoon and simplify and lighten from there. Last week, a friend read me Ch. 4 ("The story of Pinocchio and the Talking Cricket, in which one sees that
bad children do not like to be corrected by those who know more than they do.") from the Carlo Collodi version he had taken from the library, also available from Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/500 I was on the floor laughing at the proto-Jiminy's unfortunate end before Ch. 5. Disney got a major character out of THAT? Someone who gets squashed like a bug because he's so annoying?

The chapter titles are fabulous. Ch. 13 had been a bit scary, with a ghost giving dire warnings from the darkness, and the person I was reading to slid across the couch in the course of that chapter, so as to end up sitting in my lap, because it sounded so ominous. But the next title still got a laugh.

"CHAPTER 14
PINOCCHIO, NOT HAVING LISTENED TO THE GOOD ADVICE OF THE TALKING CRICKET, FALLS INTO THE HANDS OF THE ASSASSINS.

""Dear, oh, dear! When I come to think of it," said the Marionette to himself, as he once more set out on his journey, "we boys are really very unlucky. Everybody scolds us, everybody gives us advice, everybody warns us. If we were to allow it, everyone would try to be father and mother to us; everyone, even the Talking Cricket. Take me, for example. Just because I would not listen to that bothersome Cricket, who knows how many misfortunes may be awaiting me! Assassins indeed! At least I have never believed in them, nor ever will. To speak sensibly, I think assassins have been invented by fathers and mothers to frighten children who want to run away at night."

How topical!