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The Lost Words: Reclaiming the Language of Nature
"In early 2015, when the 10,000-entry Oxford children's dictionary
dropped around fifty words related to nature -- words like fern, willow,
and starling -- in favor of terms like broadband and cut and paste,
some of the worlds most prominent authors composed an open letter of
protest and alarm at this impoverishment of children's vocabulary and
its consequent diminishment of children's belonging to and with the
natural world. Among them was one of the great nature writers of our
time: Robert MacFarlane a rare descendent from the lyrical tradition of
Rachel Carson and Henry Beston...Troubled by this loss of vital and
vitalizing language, MacFarlane teamed up with illustrator and
children's book author Jackie Morris, who had reached out to him to
write an introduction for a sort of wild dictionary she wanted to create
as a counterpoint to Oxford's erasure. Instead, MacFarlane envisioned
something greater. The Lost Words: A Spell Book was born."
http://www.dailygood.org/story/2358/the-lost-words-reclaiming-the-language-of-nature-maria-popova/
