Carlo Collodi s 1883 story is an astonishing work of fantasy, even richer and more wildly imaginative than the famous film that Disney made of it. The Everyman s edition–the only one in hardcover–brings back the color-illustrated translation of 1916 that captures the vivid inventiveness of Collodi s original. Here is the endearing wooden puppet, always dreaming of becoming a boy and always tumbling into trouble: kidnapped, robbed by a cat and a fox, turned into a donkey, escaping from an enormous smoking serpent and a green-skinned ogre, rescuing his father from the belly of a mile-long fish, haunted by the ghost of a talking cricket, watched over by a fairy with turquoise hair, and, time and again, betrayed by his lie-sensitive nose.