Illustrator Jackie Morris’s birds of wonder take flight
Jackie Morris, a renowned illustrator, is preparing to release her most ambitious work, The Book of Birds, a 383-page illustrated guide to 49 threatened bird species. The book is her third collaboration with British author Robert Macfarlane, featuring his poetic text alongside her detailed watercolour paintings. Set in a secluded cottage in southwest Wales, Morris lives simply with her animals and continues to draw inspiration from the natural world.
- ▪The Book of Birds is a 383-page field guide featuring 49 threatened bird species, organized into seven thematic sections called 'wonders.'
- ▪It is the third collaboration between Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane, following the bestselling nature books The Lost Words and The Lost Spells.
- ▪Morris has illustrated or written 60 books over her 30-plus-year career and continues to create in a converted attic studio filled with art, taxidermy, and natural curiosities.
- ▪The Lost Words inspired numerous adaptations, including music, film, theatre, and games, and became a cultural phenomenon after its 2017 release.
- ▪Morris has been drawing birds since childhood, inspired by her father, who taught her bird names and gave her a copy of The Birds of Britain to practice sketching.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
As I drove endlessly along narrow roads in southwest Wales searching for Jackie Morris’s cottage on the edge of the Irish Sea, a text flashed on my cellphone: “My house has a bear on the roof.”The bear, or rather a weather vane depicting a girl riding a bear, is just about the only way to find her stone semi-detached house. It’s tucked behind a row of unruly bushes at the end of a long lane in the hamlet of Treleddyd-fawr, barely a speck on Google Maps. The girl on the bear is from Morris’s rendition of a Norwegian fairy tale called East of the Sun, West of the Moon, one of 60 books she has illustrated or written over her 30-plus-year career.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Globe and Mail.
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