Let me start by saying that I didn’t set out to listen to an abridged version of Pinocchio. That’s not how I roll. I want to experience the entirety of a text. But let me also say that I am glad this version was abridged, because if it was any longer, my brain would have tried to escape out of my skull.
I wanted to listen to an audiobook of The Adventures of Pinocchio for very important Book Bingo reasons, which I’ll get into later. But the thing is, I was worried. Would a public domain book have a slap-dash audio recording with the cheapest narrator they could hire? As I scrutinized the different versions available from my library, all at different lengths, some with waits, some available now, I hit upon one that was read by John Sessions. Hey, he was a professional actor and comedian! Surely he’d do a great job of reading a children’s tale and I’d be in for an entertaining evening of stitching and listening.
What I hadn’t counted on is the fact that either Sessions or whoever was directing this audiobook (do audiobooks have directors?) decided that what would really make this version *~sparkle~* was accents. And since Pinocchio is an Italian story, that meant we got something awfully close to “that’s a-spicy a-meatballa.” And don’t even get me started on the fox’s American accent, which bore no resemblance to how people talk in any part of America.
Add to the fact that I’ve never read the entire original Pinocchio. I’ve watched the Disney movie, and I seem to recall reading some excerpts or short versions of the original story, and I had heard that the full thing was a lot weirder and darker than the Disney movie (as is usually the case), but friends, I was not prepared for how weird and dark it was.
I definitely was not prepared for John Sessions to do a full on death-rattle when Pinocchio killed the talking cricket.
The icing on the cake was that I listened to the three and a half hours of this abridged version in a single sitting because I was desperately trying to finish it in time to turn in my Brick & Mortar Book Bingo card the next day… only to have them extend the deadline by two weeks after I turned my card in.
So yes, part of me feels bad for only listening to an abridged version of the story (and I have no idea what was removed). But for the most part I feel like I’ve experienced all of the Pinocchio I ever need to experience in my life.
By the way, if like me, you have only experienced Pinocchio in the medium of Disney and other highly sanitized adaptations, please for the love of everything you hold dear, do not just turn your kids loose with the original version. Some kids will absolutely go in for how dark, violent, and weird it is, but some will probably be traumatized and others will get bored by the moralizing and wonder why there’s not more nose-growing and talking crickets.
CWs and TWs: Child abuse, child labor, random acts of violence against a cricket, animal abuse, death, suggested death of family, hey did you know that some bad guys literally hang Pinocchio in the original version? And for this particular audio edition, just extremely offensive accents.
Format and source: I borrowed this as an audiobook from Sno-Isle Libraries.
Book Bingo Prompts
Brick & Mortar Books: Referenced in TV or Film. So here’s the thing. I don’t watch a lot of TV or movies right now. I mostly watch stuff on YouTube. And I didn’t want to just choose something that had been referenced in a show or movie I hadn’t watched. I wanted to have an actual connection to what I was reading. Then I remembered that there are several scenes of different characters telling the story of the “little wooden boy” in Our Flag Means Death. Which is hilarious, because Pinocchio was written well after the time that show is set in. So I thought it would be a nice silly little short audiobook I could enjoy. Oh how wrong I was.
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): WTF? The original story definitely has some WTF moments, but this whole entire audiobook was one long whaaaaaaaaat theeeeeeee fuuuuuuuuuu– thanks to Sessions’ accent choices.
Book Bingo Progress
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 11 out of 25 prompts complete. 1 bingo.
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 6 out of 25 prompts complete. 0 bingos.
Brick & Mortar: 25 out of 25 prompts complete. BLACKOUT! CHALLENGE COMPLETE!