(1)
Who does not know him, "Pinocchio", the child made of wood;
One of the most famous children's cartoon stories, produced by Disney in the forties, and carried with it interesting adventures and happy endings, but how many of us know the real and different story from which Disney derived its movie?
Rather, how many of us know the creator of the character and his busy life?
(2)
If you visit the Italian village of Collodi, located on a slope west of the city of Florence, you will feel at first glance that you are in paradise, a large green garden, adorned with fountains, stone stairs, flower clusters and antique marble, and on the outskirts are stone houses that give the village an aesthetic image that sticks to mind.
Here, the child Carol Lorenzini lives with his family and relatives an ordinary, routine life until he decides at the beginning of his youth to become a writer, under the name "Carol Collodi", and specializes in political and satirical writing.
His life continues in a routine manner until he reaches the age of fifty, and he becomes bored, so he makes a brave decision to change, and to do other than what he has been accustomed to for many years, so he turns to writing stories for children.
(3)
In 1881, he begins to publish his stories in successive episodes in the magazine "Journal Per e Bambini" about Geppetto, the wooden puppet maker, who came to his mind to make a puppet for a child with a little long nose and called it Pinocchio, only to be surprised that the puppet came to life, and became a child Strange behavior and strange nature.
Geppetto tries to make Pinocchio a good child, but the child's nose suddenly grows long when he tells his first lie, and the surprise continues: in every lie, his nose grows longer.
Desire looms in Carlo's head as he composes the story, and goes on in its chapters to ridicule all the liars in his country, as if he is still involved in his political articles, but in another way, he wants to hate the younger generation in lying and what follows it.
(4)
Our friend believes that many children in his country cannot enjoy real life unless he finds something to satisfy his hunger, protect him from the cold, and teach him to read and write, so he turned in his stories to fight poverty and illiteracy, believing that harsh life turns its children into killers or victims and there is no way to escape Only education to get a better life.
Carlo's harsh view of life stems from what he suffered in his childhood. Despite the beauty of the nature of the village in which he grew up, his family and other working families were working as servants who lived in harsh conditions struck by poverty and need, and 4 of his younger brothers died when he was a child due to poverty and hunger. So, it was difficult for him to leave that cloak even if he wanted to.
Carlo dreamed of possessing that magical power that brings children back to life after their departure, in order to compensate for the loss of his younger brothers who could not be saved, so he did this several times in his stories, but that was reflected in his personal life, so he did not want to marry or have children so that this scenario would not be repeated. Which he lived in his childhood, and despite that, Carlo gives the hero of his story, Pinocchio, a love story when he weakens and approaches falling into the hands of a group of criminals, only to be surprised by a beautiful blue-haired girl who tries to save him.
Most of the characters in his story were inspired by real people he had met before or lived with, and the surprise was that the characters from whom his story was inspired were not as dark as he told.
(5)
His stories achieve great success, and publishers ask him to write a new version for another edition, which actually happened in 1883, and that was the successful gateway for Carlo to get out of the world of poverty he had lived in for a long time.
Unfortunately, Carlo did not live long after the success of his novel, so he died in 1890, but his stories went through a larger and more successful journey than he thought in his life, until the Disney Network turned it into a famous children's movie with a revised story suitable for young people in 1940, to be the first actual distortion of his story Cruel, but the story did not end here.
The matter did not stop there, but fame reached all parts of the world, informing about the author of the story of Pinocchio in its original and revised version, so the decision was to convert the poor piece of land in which Carlo lived and around it into a large garden for children, so children donated from everywhere in Italy so that Walt Disney himself donated a contribution to the park, and a famous sculptor arrived from Britain and made a wonderful statue of Pinocchio in the heart of the park.
(6)
Many years before researchers in literature and criticism went to where Carlo lived and the events of his story took place, to be surprised that most of the characters in his story were inspired by real people he had met before or lived with, and the other surprise was that the characters from whom his story was inspired were not in the same dark way that narrated it.
The first to present the thread of that surprise is the beautiful girl who met Pinocchio in his story and tried to save him. She is only a girl in reality called Giovanna Rogineri, her hair is blue, her features are beautiful, her eyes shine with light, and her life was normal, she did not bear a tragedy that could be stopped.
Many of those whom Carlo met in his poor village or lived with were inspirations for a sad or cruel story in Pinocchio's novel, but the truth is that many of their lives were not as cruel as he told.
The novel was later translated into 300 languages, and more than 18 films and dramatic stories were made of it, and the world has a story to tell about Pinocchio of a dramatic nature full of adventure, a story that Carlo had not seen, and he had never thought about it, but he was the gateway to be watched and passed on by millions of children around the world until today.
Carlo is gone, but his story continues to tell itself later in its own way or in the way of its transmitters.