The Lost Spells - (Lost Works) by Robert MacFarlane & Jackie Morris (Hardcover)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

The follow-up to the internationally bestselling sensation The Lost Words, The Lost Spells is a beautiful collection of poems and illustrations that evokes the magic of the everyday natural world.

Since its publication in 2017, The Lost Words has enchanted readers with its poetry and illustrations of the natural world. Now, The Lost Spells, a book kindred in spirit and tone, continues to re-wild the lives of children and adults.

The Lost Spells evokes the wonder of everyday nature, conjuring up red foxes, birch trees, jackdaws, and more in poems and illustrations that flow between the pages and into readers' minds. Robert Macfarlane's spell-poems and Jackie Morris's watercolour illustrations are musical and magical: these are summoning spells, words of recollection, charms of protection. To read The Lost Spells is to see anew the natural world within our grasp and to be reminded of what happens when we allow it to slip away.

Review Quotes

"The Lost Spells employs Robert Macfarlane's rapturous language and Jackie Morris's bewitching illustrations to return language and art to their ancient occupations: building bridges of understanding between human and non-human worlds. More than a mere book, it's a brave act of shamanism that touches and transforms the reader's heart, healing and encouraging at a time when the world feels most desperately in need of restoration." -- Steve Silberman, author of NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity

"Macfarlane's lyrics ... ring with consonance ("Thrift thrives where most life fails, falls, / is cast adrift") and wordplay ("Woodpecker, tree-wrecker") ... Morris's fluid artwork renders the elegant tilt of a fox's snout, birds' calligraphic flight patterns, and the eyelike whorls of silver birch bark ... One to treasure." -- Publisher's Weekly, STARRED REVIEW

"This unusually beautiful book brings to readers the magic and wonder of nature ... Breathtakingly magical." -- Kirkus, STARRED REVIEW

"An enchanting diversion into the wonder and magic of nature." -- Bulletin

"Elegant ... There is enough magic here to summon wild things even for those who are snug indoors." -- Wall Street Journal

"Macfarlane and Morris bring us the mystery and wisdom of wild things as complementary and consolatory to our tame incompleteness ... These painted verses sing and shimmer with a magical exuberance that renders the wild world not parallel, not foreign, but proximate, beckoning, native to our own souls ... A charm against the curse of civilization, of exploitation, of apathy." -- Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

"Through deeply humane poems paired with warm illustrations, MacFarlane and Morris invited readers into the space where the enchanting natural world meets the expansive imagination . . . Crafted with the same tenderness as its sibling." -- Shelf Awareness