Children’s Books: Pinocchio

Walt Disney’s Pinocchio

This children’s book I purchases a while ago at a book warehouse. It had caught my eye because of its unique style and the “Vintage Collection”Sticker. This book is a reprint of an original book from 1939, when Pinocchio was originally released.  It is textured as if made from linen as the original had been. What drew me to this book was that my mother said she remembered seeing books like this in her grandmother’s house, showing me the uniqueness of this style of book.

The pictures on the inside are absolutely gorgeous! They are very classic, as if painted on a canvas with bright colors. What surprised me was some of the scenes they decided to illustrate.  The biggest example is the last picture, which is a picture of Monstro the whale.  There is no illustration of the happy ending or of Pinocchio in his final state, not even on the back cover where I thought they might have put it.

The story, while following the movie pretty closely, seems almost awkward because of the lack of dialogue, large paragraphs and the separation of sentences on different pages.  The usual children’s book has small paragraphs or short lines of story or dialogue that are completed on each page before you go to the next one and the pictures are usually corresponding with the sentences on that page.  This book is not like that at all and can seem a little awkward to new-age readers.  Not being an expert on 1930’s and 40’s literature, I can only assume that this was the way that children’s books were written at the time.

Regardless of these awkward features, I feel this is a really cool book that you or your children would not normally see and it is definitely worth a glance.

If you are interested in purchasing this unique reproduction of Disney and literature history, Amazon does have a few available at a cheap price here: Pinocchio – Vintage Collection Republished for the Original 1939 (Linen-Like).