Media Reviews
Christian Science Monitor
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.
Country Life
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.
National Geographic
From flight patterns to song, myth and mating rituals, each bird is celebrated in Morris's vibrant paintings and Macfarlane's lyrical accompanying notes.
The Marginalian
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.
Wall Street Journal
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.
NPR
[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.
Irish Independent
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.
The Guardian (UK)
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.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
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.
Booklist
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.
Kirkus Reviews
Detailed, sumptuous...an evocation or a prayer over the memory of birds that risk being forgotten.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
The ordinary becomes extraordinary in this ode to the wonders of the natural world. Bird lovers will be delighted.
