The Lost Words: A Spell Book

We had heard about this book for a while—it was wildly popular and a "book of the year" in the UK, and Macfarlane, Britain's leading nature writer, is becoming beloved in the States too. But seeing it in person is something else entirely. Macfarlane and Morris have set about reclaiming basic words of nature ("acorn," "heron") that, they noticed, have been taken out of children's dictionaries in favor of tech terms like "broadband." But the book they made is not a dictionary—it's a thing of exquisite beauty, celebrating both these simple, evocative words (with poems of Macfarlane's) and the animals and plants they represent (with Morris's glorious paintings). It's a giant book, and one that both kids and grown-ups are likely to cherish. (Age 3 and up)