Art, verse and nature are combined with entertaining elegance in The Lost Words. Word collector Robert Macfarlane and illustrator Jackie Morris team up to bridge a gap created by a new Oxford Junior Dictionary edition that drops words such as otter, willow and dandelion to make way for blog, broadband and voice-mail.
The Lost Words is a challenge to the loss of natural world language and an educational tribute to vocabulary and the environment. Each of 20 words graces three open-faced sections, moving from letters "hidden" within a single element of nature (i.e., ferns), transitioning to a descriptive acrostic verse and full-page image of the subject (an adder), finishing with a stunning confluence of the two (adder snake and ferns in the surroundings they share). This large, quality hardcover allows words and watercolor to shine and results in a work that can be left open at any page to stunning affect. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review