In an interview for School Library Journal, Ezra Jack Keats Award winner Turk described how he read about Marietta Barovier while reading up on Venetian glass blowing before going to Venice on his honeymoon. He wanted to know more about her. The book he read mentioned Marietta’s rediscovery of millefiori.

Millefiori is a glasswork technique which produces distinctive decorative patterns like “a thousand flowers” on glassware beads, also called mosaic beads. The technique for making them has been around for thousands of years, originally in Egypt, then later in Ancient Rome, Turk explains in his Author’s Note. But the technical knowledge for making them was lost for centuries. He reports that the first documentation of its return was the “rosetta” bead in the glassworks inventory of Marietta and her brother Giovanni dated in 1496. The next year, the Doge of Venice granted Marietta permission to open her own furnace, indicating that she was the intellect behind the reinvention.

Turk notes that not much is known about Marietta’s life, so much of the story he tells is based on speculation. He said in the interview, “ I think maybe I would call it fictionalized nonfiction, or historical fiction, or informational fiction. . . .”

Thus the author/illustrator shows Marietta as a young girl, fascinated with her father’s glass workshop, and dreaming of making glass herself one day. Turk imagines that Marietta was especially inspired by San Marco, with its millions of pieces of glass and stone comprising the mosaic pictures in the dome.

Turk’s artwork emulates a Renaissance style but also the art of the Impressionists, in order to capture, he writes in “About the Art” in the back matter, “the feeling of color, light, and movement in the glass and water of Venice…”

Evaluation: This picture book for children aged 5 and up should fascinate readers, inspire them to look for pictures of the beautiful rosetta beads on the internet, and perhaps interest them in the glorious beauty and history of Venice in general, and glassmaking in particular. ( )