My grandchildren often ask me to tell them stories. On a recent afternoon, I shared the tale of Pinocchio, whose fate reminds us to always to tell the truth.
Thanks to the popular 1940 Disney film, most of us know the Italian folk story of the lonely old woodworker Geppetto, who wished his wooden puppet could become a real boy. Pinocchio’s journeys led him through misadventures — and misbehaviors — until finally, his honesty and bravery helped him fulfill Geppetto’s dream.
Pinocchio was a marionette — a wooden puppet that’s controlled by a crossbar with strings attached to different parts of its body. An average marionette has nine strings attached to it, but some can have up to 80.
I got curious about marionettes and their connections to trees. The name Pinocchio is from the Italian pino and occhio, meaning “eye of a pine tree," so, his origin was probably the Swiss stone pine, named Pinus cembra, a slow-growing tree native to southern Italy. It’s been a popular carving wood for centuries.
The best woods for carving puppets — linden and basswood — are both lightweight and fine-grained to allow for detailed carving.
Today, people still use and collect traditional marionettes. And you can bet that for my next grandmother visit, I’ll be sharing more tales that feature forests and trees — stories that are rooted in nature and the past.
