A major work for children’s choir and orchestra has been co-commissioned from composer James Burton by the Boston Symphony (USA) and Hallé Orchestra (Manchester, UK) for premiere performances in 2019 (Boston) and 2020 (Hallé).

Asked whether there was an environmental message in The Lost Spells, Morris said: “It’s a celebration of the nearby wild. If there is a message there, it is simply wonder and awe at the beautiful complexity of the non-human. And respect, for the wisdom of trees, the shape of a bird, the wild of the fox.”To wish for the restoration of this ‘positive connection’ is not to lament a “lost golden age”, says Macfarlane, or to favour nature to the exclusion of technology, “rather it is to engage with much broader inequalities within society, and to seek to increase both what is good for nature and what is good for children.” Online culture has boomed, screen time has soared and the ‘roaming range’ within which children can play and stray unsupervised has shrunk by more than 90% in 40 years amid parental fears about traffic, ‘stranger danger’ and the pressure of school work.”

Since the Lost Words’ publication in October 2017, this book has had a transformative effect on all who have encountered it, not least the Folk by the Oak festival team who were inspired to conceive and commission Spell Songs. And as if the book couldn't get any better, it is filled with the most stunning watercolor illustrations of all the beautiful wildlife Robert Macfarlane is writing about! After Macfarlane read the ‘Pokémon paper’ (a study published in Science in 2002 by Professor Andrew Balmford from Cambridge’s Department of Zoology), he started to gather other evidence of a loss of ‘nature-literacy’. A National Trust survey, for instance, showed that half of children couldn’t tell the difference between a wasp and a bee, yet almost all could name a Dalek; and a three-year RSPB research project found only one in five children in Britain are ‘positively connected to nature’. It’s educational; it’s a book we should give to our children and to our adults to help them see the sense of wonder that is outside, and its captured perfectly though the power of words and the beautiful illustrations.The Lost Spells is a celebration of the natural; it is a collection of prose poetry about foxes and trees and birds and rabbits and flowers: it is an elegy to what we are losing and what we must try to retain. A timeless, stunning gift to be pored over and cherished for years - dazzlingly beautiful and richly inventive, discover the magical new book from the creators of The Lost Words Enchanting literally means "to put under a spell." Now I'm sure you can see why I think "The Lost SPELLS" is utterly enchanting! Wonderful activities and ideas celebrating the magic of nature and language which can be used standalone or consecutively as a cross-curricular scheme of work in English, Science, Art, PSHE and to support research skills. Each section takes one of the animals or items from nature featured in each spell, and invites children to Seek, Find, Speak, Write and/or Create their response with extracts and illustrations from the book to support and inspire learning:

The spells are even better and I love the fact that it says explicitly ‘this is a book of spells to be spoken aloud’. Everything about it is absolutely beautiful and we will be getting behind it in a big way,” he said. Only a year after publication, the book had won two literary prizes and been translated into several languages. The nature on our doorstep so often goes unobserved but contains wonders, Jay discovers. “What takes years to grow takes second to crush,” we are told. It is a reminder that every acorn, tree and dandelion is a world in itself and a sacred part of our own.As with The Lost Words, the publishers of The Lost Spells have commissioned Eva John to create an 'Explorers' Guides', but this time the guide has been designed to follow the seasons, and updatededitions will be made available as the year progresses. TheFolk by the Oak festival team, proud commissioners of Spell Songs, were thrilled with the release of this wonderfully inventive, dazzlingly beautiful bookand the opportunity to create new music with the Spell Songs Ensemble! 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.