An Invitation to the Sacred World of Nature
The Lost Words: A Spell Book is one of the most exquisite and important books to be published for children in recent years. Beyond its wondrous beauty there is an urgency to its message. It is a book children need now. Censorship is most often associated with political or religious individuals or groups. However, censorship may also be the result of errors of omission. When a recent edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary was newly published in Britain and around the world observant readers noted that at least 40 words from the world of nature had been displaced and were supplanted by virtual words. Children surveying the new edition of the juvenile lexicon could not locate words from the natural world such as acorn, dandelion, heather, magpie, newt, and raven. Editors sitting in high-rise glass offices in busy city centers such as London and New York made the decision that the naming of living organisms was not as important for today’s children as being familiar with words of the digital world such as attachment, blog, broadband, and voice-mail.
At a time of global warming and the rapid depletion of countless species of plant and animal life in Great Britain and elsewhere around the world the Oxford Junior Dictionary globally distanced children from the very world to which they should be connected. Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris have created a book of spells that link children with 20 words that editors vanquished from their literacy. A knowledge base grounded in the living, breathing world is important. These are wonder words. Each word and its images in the outdoor world is intended to conjure up a spell, not from witches or warlocks, but from the enchantment of living plants and creatures. These spells celebrate the magic of nature and the appeal of language. They refer to the God-given calls to humanity – especially children – from the natural world. The author and illustrator especially chose “lost” words that they believe belong in the stories, poetry, and dreams that children read, create, or experience themselves.
In addition to the six “lost” words (e.g., acorn) named above, the remaining fourteen superseded natural phenomena are:
adder kingfisher
bluebell lark
bramble otter
conker (horse chestnut) starling
fern weasel
heron willow
ivy wren
In his preface, Robert Macfarlane writes of the volume’s relevance.
Once upon a time, words began to vanish from the language of children. You hold in your hands a spell book for conjuring back these lost words. To read it you will need to seek, find and speak.
Rarely, has book design in children’s literature been so brilliant. The first thing children will notice is the large format of The Lost Words. The book is greatly over-sized. Similar to the allure of surveying a giant world atlas, children can open and read The Lost Words while lying on the living room floor or, even better, shared with a parent on a grassy lawn. The large format allows for watercolor illustrations that are magnificent in both their scope and beauty. Jackie Morris won Great Britain’s Kate Greenaway Medal, the equivalent of the Caldecott Medal in the USA, for her realistic paintings. Opening The Lost Words is an act similar to introducing children to the artistry of a painter of nature such as John James Audubon. Adults will recognize that here is a visual and poetic tour-de-force that Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, Rachel Carson, and Ansel Adams would have loved. The pages of the book are extra thick and creamy. The color gold suffuses the covering and the pages of the book. Images of goldfinches flit throughout its pages. Gold is used to highlight the acrostic poem titles that pay homage to the 20 featured entities of the natural world. It is no accident that the collective noun for goldfinches is the word charm as in “a charm of goldfinches.” The tribute to each “lost” word begins with a double-page spread of golden letters that appear to be floating and swirling randomly as if scattered by gentle breezes in meadows or woods. The “lost” word, fern, is but one example of Macfarlane’s acrostic verse tributes.
fern.
Fern’s first form is furled,
Each frond fast as a fiddle-head.
Reach, roll and unfold follows.
Fern flares.
Now fern is fully fanned.
In addition to the use of the acrostic verse format, the poet masterfully makes use of alliteration, rhythm, and occasional rhyme. Each poem is meant to be read aloud. Every verse is a conjuring spell of a plant or creature emphasizing the importance of hearing and speaking the names of living things in order to better understand and connect with the world of nature.
Click here to see the home activities Dr. Jerry Flack has designed as a companion for this book.
Side-by-side with the author’s poem is a magnificent over-sized painting of a fern on a gold leaf background. A sublime double-page painting of ferns and their place in the natural world follows. Many of the glorious spreads are filled with fleeting images of goldfinches and lush paintings of foxes, frogs, hares, owls, ravens, bird feathers, dandelion fluff and additional signs of wildlife in splendid recreations of the outdoor world throughout the seasons of a year. Morris’s resplendent watercolor paintings are perfect compositions rendered in appropriately organic shapes befitting the natural world to which they belong. Her nature compositions invite and entice children to step out into the glorious natural world and begin to explore it thoroughly. Because each of the twenty featured “lost” words is so completely explored visually and verbally, the book may best be enjoyed in multiple readings where children learn about and savor each natural phenomenon one at a time. The words and images of the twenty spells advance cross-cultural links between and among literacy, art, math, natural science, and spiritual, moral, and religious education. The Lost Words is a moveable feast for the senses.
