Pinocchio: An Illuminated Edition

Mike Mignola (creator of HELLBOY) and Lemony Snicket (author of A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS) invent an entirely new vision of PINOCCHIO--a bizarre and riveting new adventure through a beloved tale.

An oversized slipcase art book elaborately illustrated by Mignola and extensively annotated by Snicket--in the form of inserted typewritten missives from the brink of madness. An old marionette given startling and charming new life in an edition like no other.

Carlo Collodi’s classic stands as one of the strangest and darkest texts ever to be beloved by generations of children worldwide. Now, in this new Illuminated Edition from Beehive, it receives a full-text annotation from one of our great contemporary authors, and a vast suite of over fifty illustrations from one of the modern masters of illustration and visual storytelling. Together, Mignola and Snicket walk us through the wilds of Collodi’s masterpiece and reintroduce us to its odd, wonderful music.

Snicket’s annotations are presented on typewritten sheets, inserted by Snicket as his confrontation with Carlo Collodi’s text drives him slowly mad. Across over one hundred annotations, and sixty two removable pages slipped in amongst Collodi’s text, a parallel story of a writer’s journey through this great Italian fable unfolds. Snicket isn’t here to explain PINOCCHIO, or to give you historical context--he is encountering the text alongside you, speaking with it in the lyrical, hilarious, and poignantly insightful voice that makes him one of one of the great storytellers of our age. Mike Mignola’s artwork populates Collodi’s shadowed puppet-world with wonders, horrors, helpers, enigmas and everything in between, breathing new life into the charm, gloom and chaos of this beloved tale.

A stunning new entry in Beehive Books’ celebrated, award-winning Illuminated Editions series, this volume is housed in a shimmering die-cut sculpturally embossed slipcase, printed on uncoated acid-free paper, and published in an oversized 9x12＂ trim format.

MIKE MIGNOLA is best known as the award-winning creator/writer/artist of Hellboy. He was also a production designer on the Disney film Atlantis and visual consultant to director Guillermo del Toro on both Hellboy and Hellboy 2: The Golden Army films. Mignola lives in southern California with his wife and cat. LEMONY SNICKET is the author of far too many books, including the four-volume All The Wrong Questions, the thirteen-volume A Series of Unfortunate Events, and the single-volume Poison for Breakfast, and has won several dubious and/or notorious awards, most recently the Charlotte Zolotow Award for The Dark, and the Peabody Award for an alleged television adaptation of his work. He is represented in all legal, literary and social matters by Daniel Handler, the author of seven novels, including We Are Pirates, All The Dirty Parts and Bottle Grove. CARLO COLLODI (1826-1890) was born in Florence, Italy under the name Carlo Lorenzini. The eldest of ten siblings, seven of whom died at a young age, he grew up in poverty and was raised by his grandmother. At age eighteen, he began working at a bookstore under the Italian manuscript specialist, Giuseppe Aiazzi. Lorenzini always had a penchant for thinking about politics and morality. While he was a volunteer in the Tuscan Army during the Italian Wars of Independence, he founded two satirical newspapers Il Lampione (1853)--which was censored by the Grand Duke of Tuscany--and Lo scaramuccia (1854). He had a robust and varied writing career, penning countless newspaper articles, several satirical plays and stories, a parodic guidebook, and a cultural and political dossier. In 1960 he first adopted the pseudonym Collodi, a reference to the village where his mother grew up and where he spent most of his childhood while his mother worked in Florence. His interest in political allegory eventually turned into an interest in children’s fables. It began with translating Charles Perrault’s French fairy tales into Italian. He then wrote Giannettino, Minuzzulo, and Il viaggio per l’Italia di Giannettino, a children’s series that retold the unification of Italy. In 1880 he began writing what he is most famous for: La storia di un burratino (Story of a Marionette), better known now as Le avventure di Pinocchio (The Adventures of Pinocchio). The text was first published serially in Giornale per i bambini in 1881 and then republished as a book in 1883. Pinocchio has now been translated into more languages than any book besides the Bible - but Collodi would not live to see his creation’s lasting global reach, dying suddenly at the age of 63 on October 26, 1890.