FArTHER

Product Information

Much later, the boy, now a young man, finds himself drawn once more to his father's drawings and failed experiments. Using photographic collage and illustration, this is the first book that Grahame has both written and illustrated and the results are amazing. It touches upon the bonds between father and son, the tensions between freedom and responsibility, between reality and dreams.

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. The story follows a father with a dream of flying, who is so absorbed in this dream that it becomes obsession.

Spelling Seeds have been designed to complement Writing Roots by providing weekly, contextualised sequences of sessions for the teaching of spelling that include open-ended investigations and opportunities to practise and apply within meaningful and purposeful contexts, linked (where relevant) to other areas of the curriculum and a suggestion of how to extend the investigation into home learning. I found myself asking questions about the images and even making up a little more of the story in my head. 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. Close inspection of the text and illustrations provides subtle links to World War One and ancient Greece, in particular the story of Icarus, as well as strong links to the DT curriculum.

we are drawn into a world of impossible dreams, dreams that while beautifully described and hauntingly evocative are tinged with a deep despair. A young boy watches his father get so involved with his work, trying to make an invention to fly, that time spent with him is limited. 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. Not only are the illustrations whimsical and creative and beautiful, the story is wonderfully touching' ― Myfavouritebooks. He has illustrated numerous other picture books for Templar, including The Rhythm of the Rain which won the English 4-11 Picture Book Awards and the Greenaway shortlisted Leon and the Place Between .

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. Although it doesn’t contain a lot of text, the words are beautifully woven into the pictures using different fonts and text sizes. The story is rich with the concept of duty, with the literal sense of going to war, the need for the son to fulfill what his father had started, and the duty to further this dream during following generations. It's a story about family, loss and ambition with many opportunities for prediction, inference and discussion.

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 could be used as a starting point for pieces of writing, either following on the story or by taking an image and creating a different story. Much later, the boy, now a young man finds himself drawn once more to his fathers drawings and failed experiments. What first drew me to this book was the title - I immediately wondered why the illustration on the front cover depicted a father, yet the spelling clearly suggested something more. 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.Does the book contain anything that teachers would wish to know about before recommending in class (strong language, sensitive topics etc.

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. Some interesting discussion could take place about the nature of dreams- does the son continue his father's work out of sadness after his father’s death, or is the dream just so compelling that it cannot be left unfulfilled? These are not minor finnicky points: books for children need to use better fonts to encourage the children to read, to be accessible to children and parents with eg dyslexia, and to be readable at bed-time when the lights are low. 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.I bought this for my son in law whose parenting of my grandchildren I am very impressed with, I loved the story and the illustrations are memorable. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.