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.

ROBERT MACFARLANE is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and the author of a number of bestselling and prize-winning books, including The Wild Places, The Old Ways, Holloway, Landmarks, and Underland, which won the Wainwright Prize. His work has been translated into many languages and widely adapted for film, television, and radio. The American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the E. M. Forster Award for Literature in 2017. He is a word collector and mountain climber — and he has three children who have taught him more about the world than any book.

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JULIE FOWLIS is a multi-award-winning singer, composer, and voice artist who is deeply influenced by her early upbringing in the Outer Hebrides. Known worldwide for singing the theme songs in Disney Pixar’s Oscar-winning film Brave, she performs predominantly in Scottish Gaelic, and is a quiet torchbearer for her native tradition. Her work is rooted in the wild Highland landscapes in which she lives, and she is passionate about how the Gaelic language and music connect to the natural world.

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YRSA DALEY-WARD is an actor, poet, model, and author of West Indian and West African heritage. Known for her powerful poetry — both written and spoken word — Yrsa explores topics such as identity, femininity, and mental health.

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JOHNNY FLYNN is an actor, composer and songwriter. He fronts the band Johnny Flynn & The Sussex Wit, and has appeared in a number of plays and productions.

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CHRIS WATSON is one of the world’s foremost sound recordists with a particular and passionate interest in the sounds of animals and habitats from around the world. As a composer and sound recordist, Watson specializes in creating spatial sound installations, which feature a strong sense and spirit of place.

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This unusually beautiful book brings to readers the magic and wonder of nature … Breathtakingly magical.

Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEWS

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

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

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.

Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW