This is a slender coming-of-age novella, narrated by a young girl in Italy. The book’s theme is childhood and the magical aura that surrounds it. My first attempts at jacketing the book were filled with childlike imagery. All were ultimately rejected. None of the pictures seemed to adequately represent this lapidary world the author worked so hard to conjure. So I tried an all-type approach, thinking of both the writing exercises I labored over as a child and the magic-square puzzles one sees sometimes in old alchemy books.