The Lost Spells (The Lost Works)

Fabulous words and illustrations for any age.

Have you ever danced a folk waltz? With someone who knows how? Floating, flying, fleeting—fantastic. Opening The Lost Spells is like stepping into a room of flannel-clad strangers who dance like gods. It is a book of what was once called poetry: words that conjure meaning through our ears’ encounter with their sounds. These new “spells to be spoken aloud,” urge us to wonder at real, half-forgotten things, like egrets and oaks, swifts and silver birches, and the sound of spoken rhymes. They invite us to stray into a fading world that is steeped in the spirituality of physical experience.Naturalist-writer Robert Macfarlane and artist Jackie Morris crafted their 2017 The Lost Words in response to the removal of such terms as “acorn,” “wren,” and “dandelion” from a popular juvenile dictionary. The astonishingly beautiful, oversized volume weaves watercolor with verse to protest our blindness to the wild things around us. A diminutive companion to The Lost Words, The Lost Spells continues to plumb what Macfarlane calls “loss—of language, species, loved places—[which] is the tune of the times.”Knowing and naming nature demands physical presence. Yet, identifying the exquisite order of a moth wing or beech leaf is not merely sensorial, but spiritual. It reveals something of ourselves: our own vitality, fragility, and design. When nature is displaced, whether from our surroundings or our lexicon, we lose a thread of connection with our own being. As simulated experiences increasingly supplant physical ones, we find ourselves aliens to our own metaphysics. Like spoken poetry and social dance, nature study has become an activity of small children and eccentric subcultures. Can books like The Lost Spells renew our ability to marvel at our landscapes and ourselves? As the virus accelerates our virtual interactions, our need for physical contact and spiritual solace grows more urgent. Macfarlane’s and Morris’ work could not be more timely.My only fear is that the book is too beautiful. I responded with reflexive horror when my five-year-old pulled it from its package by one cover. To see its satiny dust jacket torn or its silken ribbon frayed would pain any aesthetic sensibility. However, his enthusiasm gives hope that The Lost Spells will grow lustrous with wear as it enchants us into abandoning our avatars for authentic marvel and mystery.

This is a wonderful book with beautiful writing and artwork. I got one for my grandson and had to order another for myself.

This is an element in a whole ecosystem. I love them all, both the idea and the execution. The idea behind the books and music is the loss, to the upcoming generations of children, of important words for creatures and plants made rare (some of them, anyhow) by development and ecosystem destruction, and by the technological splitting of kids from the natural world. But that's just the backstory. Robert Macfarlane is a superb UK nature writer, and the illustrator is amazing. This little book of poems is compact and suitable for an adult or for an older, reading child to enjoy on their own or for a younger child to have read to them. It's witty and clever, but gently and subtly. Each is about a single creature or plant. The same idea, but different poems is available in a larger format book, and there are companion musical albums (Spell Songs and Spell Songs II) featuring singer-songwriter Karine Polwart, Julie Fowlis, and many others. Check out The Lost Words Blessing, a popular track on my streaming service, for an impression of the sensibilities of this book, though not by the same writer.

A stunning book of pictures with poetry!

Beautiful book that connects you to nature and its creatures in an intimate and creative way. The artwork is stunning.

I’m in love with the work of the illustrator. What is not as impressive is the writing. I think sometimes, people who write poetry think they can get away with not always making a lot of sense. That’s how I felt as I read this book. Not much sense.

A stunning collection of briefly rendered yet deeply felt verses inspired by Nature and accompanied by splendid watercolour illustrations. I bought this as a Valentine's Day gift for my nephew's child (2 months old); while it will be a long time before she can read it for herself, I am confident that she will be entranced by the magical lyricism in Robert Macfarlane's words as her parents read it to her, and her young eyes cannot fail to apprehend the beauty of Jackie Morris's paintings.