The Lost Words

The Lost Words

Rediscover our natural world with this spellbinding book

Summary

A timeless, beautifully designed gift for children and adults alike, The Lost Words is a gift that will be poured over and cherished for years to come.

All over the country, there are words disappearing from children's lives. These are the words of the natural world; Dandelion, Otter, Bramble and Acorn, all gone. A wild landscape of imagination and play is rapidly fading from our children's minds.

The Lost Words stands against the disappearance of wild childhood. It is a joyful celebration - in art and word - of nearby nature and its wonders. With acrostic spell-poems by award-winning writer Robert Macfarlane and illustrations by Jackie Morris, this enchanting book evokes the irreplaceable magic of language and nature for all ages.

*** Discover The Lost Spells, the magical companion book from the creators of a literary phenomenon. ***

Praise for The Lost Words:

'The most beautiful and thought-provoking book I've read this year' Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Observer

'Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris have made a thing of astonishing beauty' Alex Preston, Observer

'My top book of the year' Susan Hill, Spectator

'Gorgeous to look at and to read. Give it to a child to bring back the magic of language - and its scope' Jeanette Winterson, Guardian

Reviews

  • Sumptuously illustrated... the poems or nature summoning spells are indebted to Gerard Manley Hopkins with rich alliteration, word-play and compound adjectives [and] the illustrations make plants and creatures luminous against backgrounds of gold leaf
    The Sunday Times

About the authors

Robert Macfarlane

Robert Macfarlane is the bestselling author of Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places, The Old Ways, Landmarks, and Underland, and co-creator of The Lost Words and The Lost Spells. Mountains of the Mind won the Guardian First Book Award and the Somerset Maugham Award and The Wild Places won the Boardman-Tasker Award. Both books have been adapted for television by the BBC. The Lost Words won the Books Are My Bag Beautiful Book Award and the Hay Festival Book of the Year. Robert Macfarlane is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and writes on environmentalism, literature and travel for publications including the Guardian, the Sunday Times and The New York Times. He is now working on his third book with long-time collaborator, Jackie Morris: The Book of Birds.
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Jackie Morris

Jackie Morris is the bestselling and award-winning co-creator of The Lost Words and The Lost Spells, two books which have captured the hearts of hundreds of thousands of readers of all ages. She also illustrated and introduced a new edition of Barbara Newhall Follett's lost classic of wild literature, The House Without Windows. As an author, Jackie Morris has produced over forty beloved children's books; as an artist she has also worked with the New Statesman, Independent and Guardian, among others. She won the Kate Greenaway Medal and the British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year for The Lost Words in 2018. Jackie lives in a cottage on the cliffs of Pembrokeshire, where she is now working on her forthcoming third book with long-time collaborator, Robert Macfarlane: The Book of Birds.
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