Book Review: The Lost Spells, Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris
Poetry Collection: The Lost Spells, Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris
We reviewed the first collaboration of these artists a while ago. The Lost Words was a breathtaking set of poems and illustrations highlighting words that had been deliberately omitted from a recent dictionary. The book was magical. Incandescent. Breathtaking.
Admittedly, we did not expect to see its like again. Sometimes only one shooting star pierces the dark sky. So, truthfully, I did not look for a second collaboration or check up on what the creators were doing.
Oops.
The Lost Spells came out in 2020, but I saw it on my library’s shelves in 2023. I grabbed it immediately, but waited to read it until I could savor every word and every drawing. It is a book worth savoring. Following the spirit of its predecessor, this book is also filled with poems set to pictures–or was it pictures set to poems? Either way, the book transports the reader into the natural world, seeing through the eyes of a red fox, an oak tree, a jackdaw, and other representative animals and plants of the natural world. A spell is cast, giving voice to the lives of typically silent or reclusive wild beings.
Macfarlane and Morris paint a world where machines are silent and nature communicates. That in itself is not new, but their approach is not one of mysticism or fantasy. They are certainly not Luddites–they both have websites and social media, although any more that is hardly the embrace of technology it would have been twenty years ago. Rather, the author and illustrator invite you to listen, truly listen, to open your mind and your heart to the voices of nature, to explore the woods and rivers and grasslands and mountains with wide eyes and a wondering spirit.
Most of the poems are acrostics, using the letters of the being to start each stanza of the poems. Accompanied by exquisite pictures, this book has the feel of a beautifully drawn and written children’s book. It is not, or rather, it is not only for children. I can see my older granddaughter pouring over it, soaking it in, warming her heart. I can see my younger grandchildren sitting on my lap as I read it to them, entranced by the pictures and hanging on the words. I can also see my children, now adults, enjoying it just as much as I did. It is a timeless and ageless book, one that deserves a place on every shelf and can find a place in almost any heart.
Book Review: The Lost Spells, Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris