The Book of Birds

“You’ve never read a bird book like this one, written and illustrated in a spirit of determined awareness, augmenting facts with spirited play… . In this book words and pictures have equal importance. Ms. Morris’s illustrations don’t give us the usual frozen portraits of guide books, but birds in flight, in conflict or comedy. She’s less concerned with depicting every feather than offering us glimpses of vitality… . The Book of Birds is, like poetry, a form of memory, recovery and ritualizing delight… . The book educates without dullness.” – David Mason - Wall Street Journal
“A love letter to our feathered friends… . Each entry is a prose poem aimed at evoking the spirit and the unique qualities of each bird” – Fiona Sturges - Guardian
”[T]he joys of bird-watching span the globe, as does [Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’s] invitation to revel in and protect the multispecies worlds of which we humans are one part.” – Barbara J. King - NPR
“From flight patterns to song, myth and mating rituals, each bird is celebrated in Morris’s vibrant paintings and Macfarlane’s lyrical accompanying notes.” – National Geographic
“The Book of Birds is no mere catalog of endangered species. It’s a lovingly produced introduction to what Macfarlane calls ‘the seven wonders of birds’ … Full-throated prose poems flag distinguishing habitats, habits, and character traits that make the birds come alive in a way that more traditional field guides do not.” – Heller McAlpin - Christian Science Mointor
“It is love that radiates from the pages of Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’s exquisite The Book of Birds… . No one has drawn out the poetry of birds more truthfully, more tenderly than Robert Macfarlane, his rhythmic incantations summoning the birds one by one, subject by subject, in all their fierce, fragile wonder.” – Maria Popova - The Marginalian
“In this field guide like no other, preeminent nature writer Robert Macfarlane and artist Jackie Morris have again joined forces to inform and entrance… . Gorgeous and lyrical… . Macfarlane’s dynamic descriptions are veritable prose poems in their rhythmic cadence, imaginative metaphors, and evocation of each bird’s distinct personality… . [alongside] Morris’s spirited and elegant paintings. A radiant, exhilarating, and invaluable creation.” – Donna Seaman - Booklist
“The ordinary becomes extraordinary in this ode to the wonders of the natural world. Bird lovers will be delighted.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Detailed, sumptuous… an evocation or a prayer over the memory of birds that risk being forgotten.” – Kirkus Reviews
“With paintings by Morris and words by Macfarlane, the book is a twist on the classic field guides that inspired both authors, evoking the spirit and poetry of birds from avocet to yellowhammer.” – Patrick Barkham, Guardian (UK)
“A love letter to our feathered friends.” – Observer
“Spellbinding and lyrical … A companion, helping you to discover wonder in the everyday … The significance of this beautiful book cannot be underestimated … Rooted in wonder, The Book of Birds has the power to persuade—to be the catalyst that reminds us all of what we stand to lose, and to spur us on to help our precious birdlife thrive once more.” – The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
“A vivid lexical treasury … dramatic, playful and designed to be read aloud … Macfarlane’s words have a tumbling, delirious, somersaulting quality … Morris’s watercolours, meanwhile, have a luminous shiver about them, not stiff and scientific, but seemingly reconjured from a first childhood sighting.” – Irish Independent
“Perhaps the most important book on the necessity of saving so many bird species from extinction since the publication of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.” – Wildlife Shelf
“Full of gorgeous illustrations and inimitable prose … The Book of Birds asks us to think of birds in radically new ways: not simply as separate components of Nature that we should learn about and identify, but as co-creators of our world that we can identify wit.” – Country Life
“A magnificent achievement … The artwork by Morris is as numinous as ever. The gold creates a field of permanence, against which the birds seem to move … Macfarlane’s writing is jaw-dropping.” – The Scotsman
“A passionate and lyrical rallying cry to both revel in the beauty of the natural world and to stop its wanton destruction … [Morris and Macfarlane’s] avowed intent is to make us fall in love with birds. And it works brilliantly … Pleasing to hold, beautiful to look at, The Book of Birds marks the moment poetry and art took their rightful places alongside science in a coalition to save our birds—and ourselves.” – The Tablet
“A dazzling compendium of 49 bird species inspired by classic bird guides with which the authors grew up.” – iNews
“Highly recommended … A sense of immediacy is created by the fact that each lyrical passage, accompanied by charming depictions, is often written in the present tense.” – The Field

Robert Macfarlane is the best-selling author of Underland, The Old Ways, and Mountains of the Mind. He coauthored The Lost Words, The Lost Spells, and The Book of Birds with artist Jackie Morris. Macfarlane has received the E. M. Forster Prize for Literature and the Henry David Thoreau Prize for Literary Excellence, and he is a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

Jackie Morris is the best-selling and award-winning cocreator of The Lost Words and The Lost Spells. She lives in Pembrokeshire, Wales.

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