Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris

I believe I found out about this lovely book from our blog and reading Brain Pickings.  I plan to order it for a Christmas gift.  I found out that an album is also available.  The album puts Macfarlane’s poetry from Lost Words to music.  The illustrations by Morris are lovely.  Macfarlane was inspired to write the children’s book because “In 2007, the new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary introduced new words such as ‘”broadband” while others, describing the natural world, disappeared. The dictionary’s guidelines require that it reflect ‘the current frequency of words in daily language of children’.” (The Guardian).  He did not want us to lose words describing nature.  Coincidentally, I listened to a wonderful interview on OnBeing, and, at the very end of the interview, Krista Tippett began asking Macfarlane about his children’s book Lost Words.  I had not made the connection.  I highly recommend Lost Words for children and adults.  It’s now being used in hospitals and hospices.  It’s a healing book for all of us.  Robert Macfarlane is a lovely man and his thoughts are a wonderful contrast to what we hear in the news.  If you need a dose of hope, I recommend the interview which focuses on Underland: A Deep Time Journey in which Macfarlane tries to find meaning by personally going deep underground instead of looking outward toward the stars.  It took him seven years to complete the book.  Macfarlane’s writing is now on my “to read” list.