Over the 11 years that I have been a grandparent as well as the creator of BookMarks, I have decided not to include any children’s books, though I’ve read thousands of them from “Red Fish Blue Fish” to the Hardy Boys (currently on volume 16 and counting!).  “The Lost Words”, however, is not really a book designed for children though its size and layout might suggest that it is meant for them.  Its remarkably beautiful illustrations, clever display of the alphabet, and word salad poetry, all call out for a more sophisticated reader, so here it is.

Robert Macfarlane is a Fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, UK and the author of some wonderful books about nature, hiking, and remote places.  His “The Old Ways” is a beautiful book about walks and hikes and poets and writers who have inhabited those spaces.  Jackie Morris lives in Wales and has written and illustrated over 40 books including some classic volumes such as ‘The Snow Leopard’ and ‘Tell Me a Dragon’.  They collaborated on this beautiful, oversized book because of their concern that “words (that) were those that children used to name the natural world around them….were becoming lost: no longer vivid in children’s voices, no longer alive in their stories.”  

To combat that trend they created this “spellbook for conjuring back these words…It deals in things that are missing and things that are hidden, in absences and in appearances….and it holds not poems but spells of many kinds that might just, by the old, strong magic of being spoken aloud, unfold dreams and songs , and summon lost words back into the mouth and eyes.”

They have marvelously succeeded in this beautiful and spellbinding book. The words include acorn, bramble, heron, raven, willow, and many others.  Each of them is introduced in a kind of puzzle, a beautifully rendered picture in which all 26 letters are scattered with the  ones that spell the word set off in a different color.  This page is followed by a painting of the object, e.g. starling, opposite the facing page which has a poem about the object.  Finally, the object is then shown in its native habitat surrounded by birds, mice, water, trees, etc. in another beautiful painting.

I loved finding the hidden word, reading the poem, looking at the lovely paintings and finding the object in the final work.  This is a special book which will be wonderful to share with my grandchildren and also with all of you.  Worth having in your library.