top: front cover featuring Pinocchio by Tim Rollins and K.O.S.; back cover
middle: title page (and facing) with two illustrations by Attilio Mussino (1911)
bottom: final pages showing another Mussino illustration (spoiler: Pinocchio becomes a "proper little boy")
from: The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, newly translated by Geoffrey Brock, introduction by Umberto Eco, afterword by Rebecca West, available November 2008
De-lurking to given an opposing view. :)
I love this cover! I think it's an excellent choice. It's a little creepy and unexpected. I was recently in Florence, home of Collodi, and saw shelves full of different Pinocchio editions. Most of them were pretty uninspired cartoony illustrations. I like this one (and the art it's based on) for taking a different approach. Sure it looks like a Photoshop job but then what doesn't these days? (And it's not the artist's fault; the 1992 work predates widespread Photoshopping.)
Posted by: Kevin Arthur | September 24, 2008 at 06:48 PM
Easily the worst NYRB cover I've ever seen. I know that's not saying much considering the usually superlative quality of the imprint's covers, but this is really atrocious. The original artwork is tolerable, but the detail used for Collodi's Pinocchio just looks like a poorly imagined Photoshop job.
That aside, I'm glad to see a classic like this joining the NYRB stable.
Posted by: Bingham Bryant | September 23, 2008 at 10:28 PM