Com­ing out next sum­mer is a dark Young Adult retelling of Pinoc­chio by award-win­ning author Deke Moul­ton. They Carved Us to Be Per­fect is a haunt­ing nov­el uses the rich lit­er­a­ture and tra­di­tions sur­round­ing myths of the golem and exam­ines anti­semitism in Italy.
 

Oren awakes in a wood­carv­ing work­shop, with no mem­o­ries oth­er than the expe­ri­ence of hav­ing been cut down with an axe and forcibly sep­a­rat­ed from his roots. He is a liv­ing pup­pet, an imi­ta­tion of a human carved out of wood by a strange and mys­te­ri­ous cre­ator, Gep­pet­to. Oren is not alone though — Gep­pet­to has carved a sec­ond pup­pet, Cecil­ia.

While Oren wish­es to reject human­i­ty and return to his life as a tree, Cecil­ia embraces her new body — she is artis­tic, and poet­ic, and loves the idea of being human. When Oren escapes the work­shop to seek out answers about his exis­tence, Cecil­ia is sold to a fam­i­ly and thrust into the role of obe­di­ent daugh­ter — with the promise that, if she behaves, she will become human one day.

Both sep­a­rate­ly chafe against the ideals and val­ues that have been forced onto them — and their worlds are turned upside down when Oren dis­cov­ers the ter­ri­ble secret of their shared history …