Farther - Tapa dura

Baker-Smith's gilded images of the father's elaborate winged contraptions and placid spreads of sky and clouds offer hope.
--Publishers Weekly

The digitally rendered illustrations offer great variety as they enrich the brief text...This evocative story will surely elicit discussions about having dreams and the persistence necessary to accomplish difficult goals.
--School Library Journal

This is a story about dreams and visions, steeped in poetry, overlaced with the Icarus myth, and sprinkled with a touch of Freudian competitiveness. ... Baker-Smith's digitally created illustrations draw on painterly techniques and photography to create a fantastically touched reality. ... [D]reamy art will draw visually attuned youngsters.
--Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Strains of melancholy color this extraordinarily lovely meditation on longing. ... Elemental and sophisticated at once.
--ForeWord Reviews

A moving tale.... [Baker-Smith's] figures, hovering in that magical middle ground between fantasy and realism, possess idiosyncratic stylistic flourishes that make for instant appeal. Realistically textured and timeless clothing grounds his lushly fantastical environments, giving his images an evocative and even haunting quality. Many children will be visually captivated and want to pass their fingers again and again over the intricate surfaces of the mechanical wings the father invents. ... Beautiful and resonant...
--Booklist Online

A sweet tribute to father-son relationships across generations.
--Scholastic Parent & Child

Stunning, collage-feel digital art accentuates this beautifully written, wistful story about unrealized dreams. ... Cover-to-cover magnificent.
--Midwest Book Review

“Hauntingly evocative.” — Books for Keeps magazine

When a father who dreams of flying goes off to war and does not return, his son decides to make the dream come true. Grahame Baker-Smith’s moving story, with stunning illustrations, shows how, with love and a bit of ambition, you can reach seemingly impossible goals.