AUGURI! – Joe (capotavola in front of Mom) celebrates his 12th birthday with his friends in Acqualagna, Le Marche, where the Mine-Spendolinis spent their first two years in Italy in a stone farmhouse from the 1850s. The family later moved to Fano on the Adriatic coast when Bruno started high school.

BACIO AND BLESSING – Joseph gets a kiss and benedizione from his great-great aunt Rina Caradori on her 100th birthday celebrated with an extended-family reunion in 2008. Even some 20 members of the part of the clan that emigrated to France in the 1930s were on hand for the big festa. Marche, along with Sardinia, boasts the highest proportion of centenarian citizens in Italy.

A SHOWCASE FOR KIDS’ WRITING – Nicoletta and Douglas publish Scarpe Cotte, rivista letteraria ed artistica per ragazzi, a bi-monthly magazine dedicated to encouraging middle-school aged kids to write narrative prose and poetry and to develop their skills as illustrators. The couple were inspired by Stone Soup, a U.S. publication that over the past 30 years has become an admired institution of youth culture throughout the English-speaking world.

DAVID EMERGES FROM STONE – This illustration, by Gianluca Ermanis of Trieste, accompanied the short story “La Statua” published in the fifth issue of Scarpe Cotte. The story, written by 14-year-old Margherita Senni of Rome, recounts the journey of a block of white rock from a Carrara cliff on its way to becoming one of the world’s most renowned sculptures.