The Lost Words — Jackie Morris

Winner of the British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year 2018
Shortlisted for the Waterstones Book of the Year 2017
Shortlisted for the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize 2018
Shortlisted for the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal 2019
Once upon a time, words began to vanish from the language of children. They disappeared so quietly that at first almost no one noticed - until one day, they were gone. But there is an old kind of magic for finding what is missing, and for summoning what has vanished. If the right spells are spoken, the lost words might return...
Robert Macfarlane – the author of the extraordinary bestseller Landmarks – and acclaimed artist Jackie Morris, who lives and breathes the natural world like almost no other, have combined their equally extraordinary talents to produce something stunning in the world of children's literature.
Robert Macfarlane

The Lost Words is a very special illustrated collection of spell-poems to re-wild the language of children. All over the country, there are words disappearing from children's lives. These are the words of the natural world - Dandelion, Otter, Bramble and Acorn, all gone. The rich landscape of wild imagination and wild play is rapidly fading from our children's minds.

Jackie Morris


This work stands against the disappearance of wild childhood. It is a joyful celebration of nature words and the natural world they invoke.Assembled in acrostic spell-poems by the peerless wordsmith that is Robert Macfarlane and illuminated by Jackie Morris’ unparalleled skill in rendering the natural world, The Lost Words is a volume to be treasured forever. The book – standing some two feet high and over 130 pages – will almost be as monumental as the world it describes, a fitting thing of beauty to arrest the decline of a language and experience that are both so quickly fading away.
Watch an exclusive interview with Robert Macfarlane about The Lost Words including Robert reading aloud of some of the book's magical nature spells.