If necessity is the mother of invention and diligence the mother of good luck, then the father of Pinocchio was a benefactor of both. Carlo Collodi was a fiery Florentine political activist who wrote The Story of a Puppet begrudgingly as a magazine series. In its original form, La Storia di un Burattino (1881) is a fast-paced, real-world, often cruel tale of the peril and spite of young Pinocchio. Collodi is said to have disliked children and had none of his own; the Pinocchio he originally wrote and the Disney film we are most familiar with are strikingly different.
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