FArTHER

Product Information

Yet the moving relationship between father and son has a bitter sweet legacy and one that carries through to the next generation. A young boy, bewitched by his fathers unrelenting passion to fly; a desperate craving that absorbs his every waking minute, finds himself entranced by the dream.

I will always remember the day he left, the clothes they gave hm, khaki against the scarlet poppies' and there is a powerful illustration to accompany the powerful mental image. And why not try older children and use it as a source for a discussion - about families, about dreams and growing up, about loss, about poetry, about art. And it uses a weird stylised font, which also makes it harder to read for younger people; for people with a reading disability; and for parents reading in lower light levels. It continues by exploring the text through a range of activities that include explicit grammar teaching, opportunities for shorter written outcomes and book talk. This illustration would be perfect for discussing with a class at the time of remembrance day and why it is we wear poppies in a very sensitive way.A young boy, bewitched by his father's unrelenting passion to fly; a desperate craving that absorbs his every waking minute, finds himself entranced by the dream. He has worked in illustration for twenty years and in 2011 won the Greenaway Medal for his inspiring tale of fatherhood, FARTHER . Much later, the boy, now a young man, finds himself drawn once more to his father's drawings and failed experiments. 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.

Cleverly symbolic, underscoring immediately the conflict between reality and fantasy - a beautiful book.I think this is a great discussion piece if you want some higher level questioning in your classroom. Winner of the 2012 Greenaway award, this truly is an inspirational story showing how any dream can be fulfilled with love and motivation. Grahame Baker-Smith is a self-taught award-winning illustrator from Oxford who completed his training at Berkshire School of Art. The story follows a father with a dream of flying, who is so absorbed in this dream that it becomes obsession.

Themes such as war, love, death and dreams could all be discussed as a class and the book deals with each of these very sensitively which justifies the recommended reading age of 5+.

I found myself asking questions about the images and even making up a little more of the story in my head. 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. I would recommend this book for year 4 literacy classes and I would say it would be an excellent text to use in a creative writing class. The unique illustrations have an almost eerie feel to them, which adds to the intrigue and questions that the story raises - for example, as I read the book I kept wondering why the father wanted to have wings, and what was driving his desire to fly away. 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.

Not only are the illustrations whimsical and creative and beautiful, the story is wonderfully touching', Myfavouritebooks.To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The text is easy to read and the images bring the story to life, but the themes are way too complex for a young child to understand without some questioning.