Lorenzo isn't happy about moving with his mother to the country, where he has no friends or phone service. As he explores their dusty, old home ndered in drab browns and greens finds a peculiar notebook and begins reading. Thus the reader is transported into the text Lorenzo holds. Decur's pencil-etched paintings give way to the soft mustard pages of some kind of diary, illustrated in bright cut-paper collage and fine black pen, telling the events of someone's life through a surrealist kind of dream-logic. These intradiegetic sections are intercut by the day-to-day of Lorenzo's new life, but the further he reads, the more the notebook's reality bleeds into his own, helping him connect the clues, until a serendipitous turn finally puts him face to face with the notebook's creator d a quiet lesson on the power of art and the importance of being seen. The large trim-size, along with sweeping, rustic paintings, provide an immersive reading experience, which will draw in lonely young artists comfortable with the abstract.

A lonely child encounters a new diversion in a new home.The story begins with Lorenzo, a little boy with blue, gogglelike glasses and pink skin, preparing to move to a new house with his mother. In the car, a classic "when I was your age…" from Mom sets the tone in an unsuccessful attempt to pull him from his cellphone to admire the scenery from the car window or the spacious property of their new house. The structure is strange and empty of all but unfamiliar smells and a peculiar notebook hidden in an antique writing desk. Upon Lorenzo's opening it, the pages change from a lush, cool-toned palette to vibrant sunflower-yellow, providing a background for candy-colored papercut illustrations depicting fantastical stories of cats riding bicycles, tiny teal quail building mysterious machines, and more. The stories reflect Lorenzo's surroundings with the distorted logic of a dream, leading him to search for and eventually uncover the truth behind them-his discoveries cleverly depicted with bright cut paper laid over the painterly gouache "real world." Alas, due to unnecessary moralization and a string of uniformly white human characters broken only by a singular, uncomfortably depicted black man, it fails to positively reflect the magic of the world beyond its pages. In the simultaneously publishing original Spanish text, readers will enjoy much more amusing use of onomatopoeia and side commentary from background characters.Unconvincing text distracts from utterly enchanting illustration. (Graphic novel. 6-10)

Lorenzo, obsessed with his cell phone, barely notices when he and his mother move to a country house: -Do we have Wi-Fi?- he asks. An enormous old rolltop desk reveals a notebook filled with stories illustrated in cut-paper collage, and Lorenzo starts reading. Throughout, artist Decur toggles deftly between Lorenzo-s world and surreal episodes from the journal, the crisp, brightly colored pages crackling with circus-like energy, the somber paintings reflecting Lorenzo-s slow but steady awakening. In the first journal story, two animals tossing a ball around break a chandelier. A nightmarish sequence shows the broken lamp pursuing them like an enormous grasshopper. The story haunts Lorenzo (-He sat completely still... without understanding any of what he had just read-), who soon notices that the new home-s hall chandelier is also broken. More reading prods Lorenzo to explore his new neighborhood, where he finds other places that the notebook twines with real life. His final discovery ties all the story-s loose ends together with a moving revelation of the notebook-s provenance. Lorenzo-s transformation as he explores his surroundings, finds compassion, and learns to create is tenderly drawn in this testimony to IRL authenticity. Ages 7-12. (Apr.)