A book created to celebrate the disappearing words of everyday nature, from acorn and wren to conker and dandelion, is fast becoming a cultural phenomenon with help from a crowdfunding campaign by a school bus driver.



Four months after publication The Lost Words, a collection of poems by Robert Macfarlane and paintings by Jackie Morris, has already shipped 75,000 copies and won two literary prizes.

Now the book, aimed at reviving once-common “natural” words excised from the Oxford Junior Dictionary, will be discovered by a generation of children after a crowdfunding drive to place a copy in every school in Scotland.

Jane Beaton, a school bus driver and travel consultant from Strathyre, Stirling, was moved to raise £25,000 to give the book to all 2,681 schools in Scotland after “a spur of the moment” commitment on Twitter.

“When I first opened The Lost Words, I just thought: ‘What a magical book,’” said Beaton. Encouraged by tweets from Macfarlane and Morris – who has donated original artwork to the campaign – Beaton was amazed when the donations flooded in. “It must be the book – it’s just captured people in a way I haven’t seen before,” she said. “People have a feeling of positivity to it.”

The book’s poems, which Macfarlane likens to “spells” to conjure wild things, were already being adapted as a choral work by a children’s choir, while a theatrical performance will debut at a summer festival before touring schools. The text is also being stitched into embroidered braille and there are plans for celebrity readers to whisper the words through the trees of the National Forest in Derbyshire.

An illustration by Jackie Morris from The Lost Words, published by Penguin Random House. Photograph: Jackie Morris, 2017

In Hertfordshire, the artist Alex Carlton donated a copy to her local school after her seven-year-old twins, Daisy and Dylan, were “enchanted” by it. “They devoured the book in one big spell-casting adventure but kept returning to it over the following few days,” she said. Their school “loved the book”, said Carlton. Her friends are planning to donate more copies to other local schools.



In Wales, the environmental group Penarth Greening was inspired by Beaton to donate nine copies to local primary schools. The author Susan Hill has taken copies into her local school, and a Norwich bookseller, Henry Layte, is donating 20 copies to local primary schools.

Layte, the founder of the Book Hive, said: “Owning a bookshop in Norwich and having small children of my own has made me all too aware that the threat to children’s access to both the outdoors and books is very real. Robert and Jackie’s masterpiece will not solve those issues overnight, but it is quite capable of instilling a lifelong love of both things in any child who picks it up.”

Beaton’s campaign has been supported by the John Muir Trust, which has produced free learning resources for teachers. . Beaton says she has been inundated with messages from teachers showing how they are adapting the book for lessons. “It’s amazing the variety of creative uses that teachers are putting it to – from literacy training and handwriting practice to outdoor activities and turning the poems into songs,” she said.

Macfarlane said: “The Lost Words was a book made in a spirit of hope, but even in our wildest dreams Jackie and I couldn’t have imagined the response it has received. Above all, we’re overjoyed to see it take root in classrooms round the country, and overwhelmed by the generosity of the campaigns that are springing up to get copies into every primary school in Scotland, Wales and various counties of England. If it helps close the gap even slightly between childhood and nature in this country, all the effort will have been worth it.”

Morris said she felt inspired to donate the book to counteract the depressing state of current affairs. “Things have been so dark in the news, and it’s quite a simple thing to do, a helpful thing, and I hope a beautiful thing to have. I like how it goes across political boundaries – it’s about the true sense of the word ‘politics’, it’s not about political parties.”

Beaton has exceeded her original fundraising target, but one final hurdle remains: how can one woman deliver books to more than 2,000 schools? Luckily she can store the books in a shipping container she used while building her own home. Volunteers, Rotary clubs and others will then help take the books to Scotland’s schools.

“Getting it into schools is just the first step,” said Beaton. “This book has so much potential to impact on people in different ways. I’m hoping all the kids in Scotland will have an engagement with nature through this. I firmly believe that being outdoors and connecting with nature helps people’s mental health.”