At least, I hear that Genovese is yummy. I wouldn’t know, being vegetarian.

As a sort of vacation swan song, Thomas and I decided to visit Europe before I got too pregnant to fly. We have in-laws to see in France (Thomas is French) and our friend Francesco invited us to come stay with him by the sea in Italy. Yesterday, he dug up a zillion onions from his garden and announced that we would be making Genovese, which takes at least nine hours to cook and many people to chop many onions. We’re on Day 2 of the cooking process.

My dear friend Becky accuses me of “burying the lead”—which is to say that I am sometimes guilty of not mentioning the most important things first. The same is true of this post.

Here is a really smart, generous review of The Cabinet of Wonders that appeared on Amazon, written by E.R. Bird. I nearly jumped up and down when I came to the paragraph about the Roma (Gypsies), and her comment that I sometimes seem to be mocking old stereotypes of these people. “Yes!” I thought. “Somebody gets it!” There’s little more exciting than somebody understanding what you’re trying to do in a book. And it was so important to me to try to represent the Roma as having a rich culture. To me, this was the very least I could do out of respect to an ethnic group that has suffered a great deal of prejudice and persecution.

In other awesome news, the website I Just Finished selected me as its Author of the Week. Yay! There is also a nice review of Cabinet. The reviewer mentions that some parents might want to glance through the novel before giving it to their kids, just because the idea of removable eyes is possibly disturbing. That’s a very fair statement.

I Just Finished also invited me to do a podcast interview on September 8 for their Coffee With an Author series. It sounds like fun, and I’m totally looking forward to it. More details to come about the podcast.

Also, Cabinet has been chosen as part of the Fall 2008 Kids’ Indie Next List under the heading “Inspired Recommendations for Kids from Indie Booksellers.” Thanks to all of the independent booksellers who nominated Cabinet!