A Provocative Story for the Eyes, Ears, and Imagination
Explore a mystical northern forest and discover the promise and cruelty of what it means to grow up.
"Shapero displays an impressive command of the unconscious."
—Kirkus Reviews
About Too Far
Can a child’s boundless and desperate imagination offer an escape from a cruel reality?
On the outskirts of Fairbanks, six-year-old Robbie meets a mesmerizing girl his own age, and together they explore the mysterious woodland surrounding their homes. The world they discover is built from their fantasies, and inhabited by creatures born from their dreams.
But while Robbie and Fristeen grow inseparable, Robbie’s parents are drifting apart, and Fristeen’s mother is coming undone. As their homes become increasingly unstable, the children travel deeper and farther into their private world. The forest—and the gods who inhabit it—becomes their refuge until, at summer’s end, they are forced to choose between the crushing prospects of the real world, and the lethal demands of their ideal one.
Told as a parable, and vividly observed, Too Far is an exhilarating and heart-breaking story of an end to innocence that captures the triumphs and follies of the child’s imagination as it struggles to remain boundless and free.
Creating Too Far
Says Rich About the Challenges
of Writing Too Far :
“I did two drafts of the book back in 1989 and 1990. The biggest problem I encountered was trying to remember what it was like to be six. The experience of creating a fantasy world in a natural setting—that I could recall. But a lot of the other things were difficult: I couldn’t summon up a six-year-old’s language or the practical details of what a child of that age can and can’t do. Can a six-year-old make a telephone call? I realized that I couldn’t get Too Far right unless I was very close to children of that age.
More About the Book
Download the entire book as PDF
About the Music
Too Far is Rich’s Second Project to Feature Music.
This time, though, he took a slightly different approach:
Says Rich, “The 12 tracks evoke 12 scenes from the story—the children’s experiences as they are remembered by their goddess, Dawn. With Wild Animus, the idea was to capture musically the ram’s entire journey. Here, Dawn remembers moments with a particular quality, so we hear those moments as opposed to the whole smash.”
“Too Far evolved in the same way as Wild Animus. The music was created alongside the book and conceived of as a whole piece.”
> More About the Music
Listen to the Music of Too Far & View the Lyrics/Liner Notes
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eBook
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“Shapero displays an impressive command of the unconscious.”
— Kirkus Reviews
