Pinocchio

Born in 1975, Alessandro Sanna is considered one of Italy's leading contemporary illustrators. He has earned wide recognition across Europe as an illustrator and author, and his work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review and The New Yorker. He is a prolific and popular creator of illustrated books for children and readers of all ages and has received many awards and had many exhibitions. He lives and works in Mantua, Italy.

"Alternating between panels and full- and double-page scenes whose bright, bleeding colors evoke tie-dyed fabrics, Sanna shows the proto-Pinocchio gathering companions and confronting a forest of trees and fire, a ravenous snake, and an enormous shark, before growing into a tree. It's a haunting and wholly original perspective on Collodi's classic that suggests that Pinocchio's mischievous spirit draws from a primordial, even immortal, source of energy." -- STARRED REVIEW, Publishers Weekly "In the mostly wordless pages of " Pinocchio: The Origin Story" (Enchanted Lion, 48 pages, $19.95), exquisite paintings by the Italian watercolorist Alessandro Sanna depict a series of mystical events that produced the bit of wood that the woodcarver Geppetto would eventually fashion into a marionette--which became a real boy--in Carlo Collodi's 1883 story "Pinocchio." [...] Powerful and strange, this picture book invites contemplation..." -- Meghan Cox Gurdon, The Wall Street Journal