FArTHER

Product Information

It touches upon the bonds between father and son, the tensions between freedom and responsibility, between reality and dreams. His first title for Templar Books, Leon and the Place Between, was short-listed for the Kate Greenaway Medal, and FArTHER went on to win in 2011.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Grahame Baker-Smith’s moving picture book story, illustrated with stunning collage artwork, shows how – with love, hope and ambition – you can reach seemingly impossible goals. After reading the book I felt that the word 'farther' was perhaps used to mirror the father's desire to escape and be free, as well as the fact that he actually does leave when he goes to war. A young boy, bewitched by his father's passion to fly; a desperate craving that absorbs his every waking minute, finds himself entranced by the dream. The style of illustration in this book, a mix of artwork, photographs in a collage come together to create a most unusual picture book which explores the relationship between father and son in a particularly poetic and elegant way' ― Librarymice.A complex book that has several themes that would appear more prevalent the older or 'mature' the reader. These often thought-provoking stories look at the reactions ordinary people have to the unusual situations they find themselves in and feature a host of different illustrative styles ranging from collage to painterly Edward Hopper-esque scenes.

Ir seems genuinely auto-biographical and explores the relationship between grandfather-father-son, and their dreams and hopes. Firstly I feel the images would generate interesting discussions in the class, around the characters’ emotions and feelings and also encouraging the students to use their imaginations when looking at the images.What happens to his father is never clarified; whether he died or was lost is unclear, but his son and in the end his grandson follow his dream.

The style of illustration in this book, a mix of artwork, photographs in a collage come together to create a most unusual picture book which explores the relationship between father and son in a particularly poetic and elegant way' - Librarymice. Using photographic collage and illustration, this is the first book that Grahame has both written and illustrated and the results are amazing. It's a story about family, loss and ambition with many opportunities for prediction, inference and discussion. A son remembers his father - his dreams of being able to fly as well as spending time together until one day the war takes him away forever.Illustrations create a surreal and sophisticated landscape that complements the measured cadence of the first-person narration. For many books these two points would cause me to only give a single star rating, so the fact I still rate this at 4 stars say something about how good it is. Maybe I’m confused about what the Kate Greenaway Medal is… I was under the impression that it was the UK equivalent of the Caldecott medal given in the US. It is a high quality picture book where the illustrations say so much more than the words and can be a great source of discussion and inference with deep themes intertwined.