LOOK UP

Originally published in Spain, a meditation on the rewards of pausing to notice beauty in one’s surroundings.

Clad in white work clothes, a straw hat at his side, a brown-skinned man with “an enormous curiosity about the sky” sits in the grass gazing above at the pale blue expanse, overlaid with cottony clouds. On the right-hand side of this double-page spread, a parade of workers dressed like him march into the distance. Eventually, the crew begin working, ignoring their comrade. Lush, textured, pastoral scenes, rendered in oil, pastel, charcoal, and colored pencil, give way to images of tiny figures creating skeletal structures. Amid his peers’ indifference, the protagonist’s curiosity “wither[s],” and he joins the others. A dramatic composition of bodies silhouetted against a full moon gives way to a parallel scene of a huge, circular hole in the ground, which the main character stumbles upon. Something stirs within, and he emits a primal scream into the black abyss. In a marvel of colorful, pointillistic patterns, thousands of birds emerge, moving in clusters across the pages, their music and “windstorm” enticing the laborers to look up. An endnote explains that this phenomenon happens daily in Mexico’s Cave of Swallows. Children will empathize with the protagonist, torn between following his personal longing and going with the group mentality. Sensitively translated from Spanish, López’s text provides an elegant accompaniment to the author/illustrator’s arresting art.

A story that feeds the spirit.