The Lost Words

A glorious book of rhythmic short poems about words that have been removed from the Collins Children's English dictionary. Macfarlane and Morris want to celebrate these words, and to give them new life. And so they do. It is a perfect collaboration: The poems are written by nature writer Robert Macfarlane, with illustrations by Jackie Morris that alight the page and make every word move with the quickness of a bird in flight.

Kingfisher: the colour-giver, fire-bringer, flame-flicker, river's quiver.

This is not a book for children. Adults, though, I can think of many who would love it, who’d get a sappy smile upon seeing its size, feeling its heft, and stepping respectfully in. It’s a gentle, sweetly comforting tome; Milne’s Hundred Acre Wood in sepia. One could read it in an hour; my first pass took me a week. I enjoyed sipping, leaving it open to a word or illustration, stopping a few times each day to breathe it in.

A truly magical book. Jackie Morris captures the essence of nature perfectly. From Kingfishers stalking a river, a nightmarish Willow tree in the moonlight, to my favourite, the otters showing their agility in the water.

Robert Macfarlane is trying to bring the words of nature back into the limelight and he uses clever wordplay to make that happen. Each word starts off hidden amongst other letters, you have to decipher the word to continue and find a wonderful poem. The best of these was the starlings, you could sense the next page was going to feature the murmuration.

I read this book with my daughter and she loved it, each poem created discussion on the words used, each picture was explored looking for hidden gems, every page was savored.

This is a wonderful book, you've got to get your hands on a copy to experience it.

Blog review> felcherman.wordpress.com/2019/08/03/the-lost-words-by-robert-macfarlane-jackie-morris-illustrator/