When You Look Up

Little Lorenzo seems lost as he moves to a new house while clutching his cell phone as his link to the past. Argentine cartoonist, Decur, captures the desolation that children feel when separated from their homes. Fortunately, forlorn and bug-eyed Lorenzo discovers a hidden notebook in a huge old desk in his new room.

The drawings and stories in this notebook transport him into a dreamlike environment where he wanders and wonders. The surrealistic scenes are dramatically caricatured in intense color on craft paper, with bizarre chimeric figures representing the characters. The various stories that Lorenzo hungrily consumes so totally absorb him that he makes a parallel notebook of his own. Later, he discovers that the original journal was authored by a senior living in a retirement home and that it related events from his life. Lorenzo shyly gives his own version of this history to the original author.

This colorfully illustrated story attempts to capture the sorrowful state of a transplanted child who dreams of finding a companionable dog, or of saving a beautiful girl whom he can love, along with other fantastic scenes that befuddle the mind in times of distress. The vibrant colors capture the eye, while the reader roots for this strange, lonely, little boy. Young readers might dare to enter this mystical world with Lorenzo and share some of their fantastical dreams.