7.2 /10 1 Votes7.2
Cover artist Provensen Language English Pages 44 pp Originally published 1981 Publisher Harcourt | 3.6/5 Goodreads Country United States Publication date 1981 ISBN 0-15-293823-0 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Similar Alice and Martin Provensen books, John Newbery Medal winners, Children's literature | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
A Visit to William Blake's Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers is a children's picture book written by Nancy Willard and illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen, published by Harcourt Brace in 1981. The next year Willard won the annual Newbery Medal and the Provensens were one runner-up for the Caldecott Medal from the professional children's librarians. William Blake's Inn was the first Newbery-winning book to also be named a Caldecott Honor Book. Last Stop on Market Street later won the 2016 Newbery Medal and a Caldecott Honor.
Contents
The title alludes to Willard's inspiration by William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience.
Content
In a prose introduction, Willard tells how she was introduced to the poetry of William Blake when she was ill as a seven-year-old. She asked her babysitter, Miss Pratt, for a story "about lions and tigers" and Miss Pratt responded with Blake's "The Tyger". Two days later she received a copy of "Songs of Innocence and of Experience" inscribed "Poetry is the best medicine. Best wishes for a speedy recovery. yrs, William Blake."
The fifteen poems that follow, plus an epilogue, describe the events of a day and a half of a child's visit to William Blake's Inn. Inhabited by such creatures as the Rabbit, the Rat, the Wise Cow, the King of Cats, the Tiger, the Man in the Marmalade Hat, and of course William Blake himself, it is a place of wonder and magic.
Poems
Style
Willard's poetry is metrical and rhyming, simple in many ways but never simplistic. Hints of a larger universe or magical forces at work are never far from the surface. In the central "Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way," most of the characters express wonder and awe at the eternal beauty around them and are rewarded by Blake with gifts of stars, while the rat, sullen and cynical, receives only "a handful of dirt."
The illustrations are beautiful gouache paintings which are whimsical and iconic, making great use of the architecture of Blake's England.
Derivative work
A Visit to William Blake's Inn has been set to music as a song cycle by American composer Dale Lyles.
Misattribution
All fifteen poems were written by Willard for the book. One of them, "Two Sunflowers Move into the Yellow Room", has been attributed to Blake many times, especially since 2001 as the error has proliferated online. It has been analysed as Blake's work occasionally and in Britain "many schools have been teaching the poem as an example of Blake's work."
The mistake was discovered by Thomas Pitchford, a secondary school librarian in Hertfordshire, who "thought the style bore little relation to the poet's other work" and pursued the matter.