Carlo Collodi

THREE UPCOMING ADAPTATIONS: a Netflix stop-motion production directed by Guillermo del Toro and voiced by Ewan McGregor, Cate Blanchett, Christoph Waltz, John Turturro, and Tilda Swinton; a Disney live-action adaptation directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks, Cynthia Erivo, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lorraine Bracco, and Keegan Michael-Key; and an English-language cartoon series called Pinocchio and Friends, from the Viacom-owned Italian-US production company Rainbow-all expected to be released in December.

NEW TRANSLATION: The current Penguin Classics edition is a translation from the 19th century. This new translation seeks to rescue the novel from the precincts of children's literature and provides extensive annotations unpacking the novel's layers of meaning that elevate it to the status of a great work of Italian, and world, literature.

AUTHORITY OF TRANSLATORS: They're steeped in Italy-one having lived there for 20+ years and written the bestselling book The Italians, the other being a native who has taught widely about Italian literature and culture-and are thus supremely well-positioned to speak to all the novel's uniquely Italian features lost in the Disney children's adaptations.

TIMELY: Our misinformation age has made the character of Pinocchio, long synonymous with lying, suddenly current: The Washington Post's popular Fact Checker column applies to political misstatements a Pinocchio rating.

ANTI-AUTHORITARIAN MESSAGE: Even more than a novel about lying, The Adventures of Pinocchio is a satire of the corrupt Italian king and ruling class, and its core message is the importance of education to challenge them: Pinocchio repeatedly gets into trouble when he avoids going to school; he is promised his humanity only when he excels in his studies, with knowledge empowering him to avoid staying forever a puppet.

PARALLELS TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: One of fiction's best-known artificially created humanoids, Pinocchio spins out of control in a way that speaks to our anxieties about AI.