The Lost Words (Lost Works)

Review Quotes:

"The Lost Words is neither a read-on-the-commute book nor a recline-in-bed-and-prop-on-your-belly book. Its weight and unapologetic size demand it be explored on a flat surface; even better, on the floor with you kneeling over it; even better, read aloud; even better, with a child or friend." -- Orion Magazine

AN UNPARALLELLED GIFT BOOK:

• The Lost Words is a gorgeously designed, fully illustrated, one-of-a-kind large format book that would make the perfect gift book for the holidays. The package is beautiful, featuring a gold-foil-stamped printed case and full colour, full-bleed illustrations. Jackie Morris' artwork brings to life the poems' nature themes and would stand out even without the accompanying evocative poems.

A PROMINENT AUTHOR AND PERSONALITY WITH MANY PLATFORMS:

• Robert Macfarlane is a major literary and cultural figure in the United Kingdom with his writing on environmental topics regularly featured in the Guardian and Granta. He is a regular presence on television and hosted an adaptation of his book The Wild Places on BBC's The Natural World. His travel book The Old Ways was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and Philip Pullman named it one of his best books of 2012.

A SENSATION IN THE UK:

• The Lost Words was acclaimed in the UK with stellar reviews in the Observer, the New Statesman, the Spectator, and the Guardian and author features in videos by the BBC and Waterstones bookshop. Jeanette Winterson, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, and Alex Preston all picked it as one of their best books of 2017 in the Guardian. The Lost Words has also inspired adaptations, art exhibits, and a successful Kickstarter campaign to buy copies of the book for every primary school in Scotland. As of February 2018, the book has sold 75,000 copies

GREAT FOR ALL AGES:

• This book is perfect for adults interested in the "re-enchantment movement" or those who just want to rediscover nature. Children newly interested in plants and animals will be captivated by the beautiful hand-painted illustrations and acrostic poems.

A FOCUSED, ENGAGED AUDIENCE:

• The book's subject matter lends itself naturally to a wide and engaged audience in environmental and conservationist groups. The UK-based John Muir Trust has already developed online resources tied in with the book to help children, educators, and activists explore nature and Canadian and American organizations would be a perfect audience for the title.

PRAISE FOR ROBERT MACFARLANE, JACKIE MORRIS, AND THE LOST WORDS

FINALIST, WAINWRIGHT PRIZE

"A gorgeous book!" -- @MargaretAtwood

"Art, verse, and nature are combined with entertaining elegance in The Lost Words . . . This large, quality hardcover allows words and watercolour to shine and results in a work that can be left open at any page to stunning effect." -- Shelf Awareness, STARRED REVIEW

"Stylish and melancholy, The Lost Words is a book to savour." -- Wall Street Journal

"A sumptuous, nostalgic ode to a disappearing landscape." -- Kirkus Reviews

"This union of natural history, poetry, art, and whimsy is, indeed, a truly enchanting all-ages book of life to contemplate, read aloud, and share." -- Booklist

"My top book of the year." -- 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

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

"A breathtaking book." -- New Statesman

"Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris have made a thing of astonishing beauty." -- Alex Preston

"A cultural phenomenon." --The Guardian

"Every page is enthralling." -- New York Times

"Stylish and melancholy, The Lost Words is a book to savour."-- Wall Street Journal

"Art, verse, and nature are combined with entertaining elegance in The Lost Words ... This large, quality hardcover allows words and watercolour to shine and results in a work that can be left open at any page to stunning effect." -- Shelf Awareness

"Utterly enchanting, it's celebration of nature -- but also language itself. If I ran the world, it'd be in every school library and classroom possible." -- Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

"This union of natural history, poetry, art, and whimsy is, indeed, a truly enchanting all-ages book of life to contemplate, read aloud, and share." -- Booklist

"A sumptuous, nostalgic ode to a disappearing landscape." -- Kirkus

"An enchanting diversion into the wonder and magic of nature." -- Bulletin

"A gorgeous book!" -- @MargaretAtwood

From bestselling Landmarks author Robert Macfarlane and acclaimed artist and author Jackie Morris, a beautiful collection of poems and illustrations to help readers rediscover the magic of the natural world.

In 2007, when a new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary -- widely used in schools around the world -- was published, a sharp-eyed reader soon noticed that around forty common words concerning nature had been dropped. Apparently they were no longer being used enough by children to merit their place in the dictionary. The list of these "lost words" included acorn, adder, bluebell, dandelion, fern, heron, kingfisher, newt, otter, and willow. Among the words taking their place were attachment, blog, broadband, bullet-point, cut-and-paste, and voice-mail. The news of these substitutions -- the outdoor and natural being displaced by the indoor and virtual -- became seen by many as a powerful sign of the growing gulf between childhood and the natural world.

Ten years later, Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris set out to make a "spell book" that will conjure back twenty of these lost words, and the beings they name, from acorn to wren. By the magic of word and paint, they sought to summon these words again into the voices, stories, and dreams of children and adults alike, and to celebrate the wonder and importance of everyday nature. The Lost Words is that book -- a work that has already cast its extraordinary spell on hundreds of thousands of people and begun a grass-roots movement to re-wild childhood across Britain, Europe, and North America.

Review Citations:

• Booklist 10/15/2018 pg. 20 (EAN 9781487005382, Hardcover)
• Kirkus Reviews 10/01/2018 (EAN 9781487005382, Hardcover)
• Publishers Weekly 10/08/2018 (EAN 9781487005382, Hardcover) - *Starred Review
• Shelf Awareness 11/06/2018 (EAN 9781487005382, Hardcover)

Contributor Bio:MacFarlane, Robert

ROBERT MACFARLANE's Sunday Times- and New York Times-bestselling books include Is a River Alive?, Underland, Landmarks, The Old Ways, The Wild Places and Mountains of the Mind, as well as a book-length prose-poem, Ness. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages, won prizes around the world, and been widely adapted for film, music, theatre, radio and dance. He has also written operas, plays, albums, choral works, and films including River and Mountain, both narrated by Willem Dafoe. He has collaborated closely with artists including Olafur Eliasson, and with the artist Jackie Morris he co-created the internationally bestselling books of nature-poetry and art, The Lost Words and The Lost Spells. In 2017, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the E.M. Forster Prize for Literature, and in 2023 in Toronto he was the inaugural winner of the Weston International Award for a body of work in the field of non-fiction. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and is presently working on a graphic-novel re-telling of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

JACKIE MORRIS has written or illustrated over seventy books, including the beloved children's classics Tell Me a Dragon and East of the Sun, West of the Moon and a volume of modern folklore for readers of all ages, Wild Folk, co-created with Tamsin Abbott, as well as introducing and illustrating Barbara Newhall Follett's gem of wild literature, The House Without Windows. She is the internationally 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. In 2018 she won the Kate Greenaway Medal and the British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year for The Lost Words. Her artwork is held by public art collections in the UK and USA and has been published in the New Statesman, Independent and Guardian among other venues. She tours and performs with the Spell Songs ensemble around the UK, and is a Fellow of Herefordshire Art College.