Pinocchio

Meet the voices

• Narrator · 旁白 — Tells the tale of a puppet who couldn't stay out of trouble, and of the old man who never stopped loving him.
• Pinocchio · 匹诺曹 — A runaway wooden puppet with a quick tongue, a huge appetite for fun, and a nose that grows every time he lies.
• Geppetto · 杰佩托 — A poor old woodcarver in a yellow wig who carves Pinocchio and loves him like a son, whatever he does.
• The Talking Cricket · 会说话的蟋蟀 — A tiny cricket who has lived in Geppetto's room for more than a hundred years and always tells Pinocchio the truth.
• Fire-Eater · 吃火人 — A giant puppet master with a black beard down to the floor, a terrible roar, and a soft heart that makes him sneeze.
• Harlequin · 阿莱基诺 — A puppet in Fire-Eater's theater who greets Pinocchio as a long-lost brother.
• The Fox · 狐狸 — A smooth-talking fox who pretends to be lame and knows exactly how to make a fool dream of gold.
• The Cat · 猫 — The Fox's partner, who pretends to be blind and repeats the end of everything the Fox says.
• The Fairy with Blue Hair · 仙女 — A kind fairy with sky-blue hair who saves Pinocchio, laughs at his lies, and promises he can become a real boy.
• The Parrot · 鹦鹉 — An old parrot who can't stop laughing at a puppet who planted his money in a field.
• Lampwick · 小灯芯 — Pinocchio's classmate and the laziest boy in school, who knows the way to a land with no school at all.
• The Coachman · 车夫 — A round little man with a sweet, soft voice who drives boys to Toyland, and has his own reasons for it.
• The Policeman · 警察 — A policeman who catches a runaway puppet by the nose.
• The Buyer · 买主 — A grumpy man who buys a donkey at the market because he needs a new drum.

8 chapters, one journey

Key words in Pinocchio

• 鼻子 bí zi: nose
• 爸爸 bà ba: father
• 木头 mù tou: wood
• 书 shū: book
• 上学 shàng xué: to attend school
• 玩具 wán jù: toy
• 田 tián: field
• 玩儿 wán r: to play
• 帽子 mào zi: hat
• 大衣 dà yī: overcoat

Behind the story

This book retells The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, the pen name of the Florentine writer Carlo Lorenzini. The story first appeared in installments in a children's magazine in Rome from 1881 and came out as a book in 1883. This retelling squeezes its thirty-six chapters into eight, but everyone you meet here is Collodi's own: the Talking Cricket, the puppet master Fire-Eater, the Fox and the Cat, the Fairy with blue hair, Lampwick, and the huge shark.

In Chinese the novel is called 木偶奇遇记, “the wonderful adventures of a wooden puppet,” and Pinocchio's name has been written in several ways; this book uses 匹诺曹. His nose is the part everyone remembers, and Chinese children know the warning too: 说谎鼻子会变长, “tell a lie and your nose will grow.”

Did you know?

• When the story first ran in the magazine, Collodi ended it at what is now chapter 15, with the Fox and the Cat leaving Pinocchio hanging from a big oak tree. Readers wanted more, and a few months later he picked the story up again.
• In the novel, Pinocchio's nose first grows while Geppetto is carving it, before the puppet has told a single lie.
• Toyland in the novel has no schools at all. Every week there has six Thursdays and one Sunday, and the autumn holidays start on the first of January and end on the last day of December.