Happy Centenary, Pinocchio! is a pioneering study of the cultural journey of Italian children’s literature into postwar Poland. With its meticulous research, it explores how Italian authors—both iconic and lesser-known ones—entered the Polish literary landscape during a politically charged era. Drawing on literary reception theory, bibliology and press studies, the book retraces the mechanisms that impacted the selection, translation and dissemination of Italian works for young readers under a centrally regulated publishing system.
Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis, Katarzyna Biernacka-Licznar examines how socio-political factors, censorship and publishing policies influenced what Polish children could read. Her study offers a panoramic view of Italian children’s literature from the unification of Italy to the year 1989, while also discussing the reception of individual authors, such as Carlo Collodi, Edmondo De Amicis and Gianni Rodari. It draws on a wide range of sources, from archival censorship records to interviews with translators and editors, to provide a rich, interdisciplinary account of literary exchange.