The Lost Words

“Once upon a time, words began to vanish from the language of children. They disappeared so quietly that at first almost no one noticed – fading away like water on stone. The words were those that children used to name the natural world around them: acorn, adder, bluebell, bramble, conker – gone! Fern, heather, kingfisher, otter, raven, willow, wren…all of them gone! The words were be-coming lost…”   

The Lost Words is a spell book that seeks to conjure the near-lost magic, beauty and strangeness of the nature that surrounds us, for readers both young and old. Taking the form of twenty ‘lost’ words, collected alphabetically from ‘Acorn’ to ‘Wren’ each word becomes a spell - written by Macfarlane, which is intended to be read aloud. The images - painted by Morris, capture first the absence of the plant or creature within its habitat and then its return. The spell summons the image and the word back into being, making this a book of enchantment in more than one sense. 

The Lost Words had become a ‘cultural phenomenon’ (Guardian), and has sold around half a million hard back copies in under two years and has won numerous awards including the prestigious illustration award CLIK Kate Greenaway Medal 2019 for Jackie Morris. The book has been translated into numerous languages and adapted for film, drama, dance, music and folksong. Over three quarters of primary schools in England, Wales and Scotland have had a copy donated to them, thanks to the grassroots crowdfunding movement.

‘Breath-taking, magical… Jackie Morris has created something that you could spend all day looking at’ New Statesman