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Too Far <\/em>follows six-year-old Robbie, a child with a lot of imagination and nowhere to put it, living in the Alaskan countryside. Robbie\u2019s parents are in a failing marriage\u2014his father encouraging his curiosity, his mother determined to keep him confined to the house. One day, on a whim, Robbie travels out into the forest and meets a girl named Fristeen. Fristeen is colorful, chipper, and utterly wild. Fristeen is under the care of her easygoing but spacey mother, Grace. Fristeen and Robbie form a tight bond, and the two travel into Too Far, their make-believe wonderland. In Too Far, there is a red lake, a tree named He Knows, a forest of Bendies, and the benevolent but mysterious Dream Man and Dawn. Although Too Far becomes the children\u2019s escape to joy, they soon realize that they can never escape reality, as it soon creeps into Too Far.<\/p>\n Too Far <\/em>is a book that is told in two parts: Too Far and the real world. The real world is easy enough to understand, albeit told through children\u2019s eyes. Robbie and Fristeen\u2019s parents are presented the way a child would, through very opinionated eyes. To Robbie, his mother is controlling and boring, not wanting him to travel out into the woods, but to readers, we understand where her maternal fear comes from. Robbie sees his father as fun-loving and supportive, though we may think him to be too loose with his child. Robbie looks up to Fristeen\u2019s mother Grace as a wise, mystic woman who is as easy-going as it gets. We, however, see that Grace is often drugged out of her mind, and though she loves her daughter, she also pays no mind to her safety. Framing these characters through Robbie\u2019s and Fristeen\u2019s eyes works both ways: we see them as the flawed humans they are, while we also see how tragically idealistic the children are.<\/p>\n The second part of the book, Too Far, is told in a very mystical, fairy-tale way. There\u2019s a tree named He Knows that talks, a \u2018bouncy lake\u2019, etc. Although we as readers know that these are simply fragments of the children\u2019s imaginations, they are treated as fact. The characters of Dawn and Dream Man may seem confusing at first, but as the book continues, it becomes clearer that they represent the children\u2019s parents: they love them, but they don\u2019t always make sense, they do bad things and don\u2019t apologize, and they bounce between caring for and pulling away from the kids. It also becomes increasingly clearer throughout the story that Too Far is more dangerous than the children realize. Playing out in the woods is all fun and games before the reader realizes, \u201cOh, yeah, these are two children completely unsupervised in a place where they could die.\u201d<\/p>\n Without giving away spoilers, the book does end on a very somber note, albeit not one that doesn\u2019t make sense. In fact, as readers, we may consider the ending to be bittersweet, though it\u2019s a tragic one for Robbie and Fristeen. I think the book overall captures the imagination and innocence of children, while also capturing the adult fear of \u201cThese children have no idea about what a bad situation they\u2019re in.\u201d Also of interesting note\u2014the book has a soundtrack! Dawn Remembers <\/em>is an album by Rich Shapero and Maria Taylor made with the book in mind. Cool.<\/p>\n On a more negative note, there are some slow parts in the book, wherein Robbie and Fristeen are just moseying around Too Far. Now, arguably, this is because they\u2019re two bored kids with nothing to do, but it still makes it a tedious read. Especially noticeable in that the kids follow a sort of pattern every time they go into Too Far. Some scenes with Dawn and Dream Man can be a bit hard to decipher, as they are two unreal things being treated as real\u2014in other words, though they are in the children\u2019s imaginations, they seem to have real-world effect.<\/p>\n And of course, the most controversial part of the book\u2014two kids in a sexual relationship! Robbie and Fristeen never actually have sex\u2026or, if they did, it was too ambiguous to tell\u2026but there are parts where the six-year-olds become\u2026acquainted <\/em>with each other. Kids learning about sexuality is a really tricky thing to write on. It happens, we\u2019ve all been through it, but it\u2019s very uncomfortable when done wrong, and it can very easily be done wrong. And Too Far\u2019s <\/em>depiction of the situation is\u2026fine. No, I did not enjoy reading about two children getting naked together, but it could have been way worse.<\/em><\/p>\n All in all, though it can be difficult to understand and slow to process, Too Far <\/em>does give a very interesting take through a child\u2019s view. It is imaginative, worrying, and hopeful at the same time. I understand that it is a very divisive book, though, so I\u2019d day look at a sample and see if it interests you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Too Far follows six-year-old Robbie, a child with a lot of imagination and nowhere to put it, living in the Alaskan countryside. Robbie\u2019s parents are in a failing marriage\u2014his father encouraging his curiosity, his mother determined to keep him confined to the house. One day, on a whim, Robbie travels out into the forest and … Continue reading “Too Far by Rich Shapero”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,3],"tags":[13,38,39],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1913"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1913"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1989,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1913\/revisions\/1989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}