The Lost Words: inspiring children to find, love and protect nature
First there was the finding that British primary school children were more at ease naming their favourite Pokémon character than they were at naming a hare, a deer or an oak tree.
Then there were the revisions to a new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary: out went everyday nature words like acorn, bluebell and kingfisher, no longer used enough by children to merit inclusion; in came attachment, broadband, voice-mail, reflecting today’s tech-savvy child who is more at home on the internet than they are in the woods.
Fascinated and concerned by these changes, Dr Robert Macfarlane began to wonder about the relationship between childhood and the living world...