A Visit to William Blake's Inn

A Visit to William Blake's Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers is a book by Nancy Willard that won the Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature in 1982. It is also the only book to have won both the Newbery Award and the Caldecott Honor Award. (The Caldecott Medal in 1982 went to Jumanji.) In a prose introduction, Nancy Willard tells how she was first introduced to the poetry of William Blake when she was ill as a seven-year-old. When she asked her babysitter, Miss Pratt, for a story "about lions and tigers," Miss Pratt responded with Blake's "The Tyger," and two days later she received a copy of "Songs of Experience" and "Songs of Innocence," 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. 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. The poems are:

• William Blake’s Inn for Innocent and Experienced Travelers
• Blake’s Wonderful Car Delivers Us Wonderfully Well
• A Rabbit Reveals My Room
• The Sun and Moon Circus Soothes the Wakeful Guests
• The Man in the Marmalade Hat Arrives
• The King of Cats Orders an Early Breakfast
• The Wise Cow Enjoys a Cloud
• Two Sunflowers Move into the Yellow Room
• The Wise Cow Makes Way, Room, and Believe
• Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way
• When We Come Home, Blake Calls for Fire
• The Marmalade Man Makes a Dance to Mend Us
• The King of Cats Sends a Postcard to His Wife
• The Tiger Asks Blake for a Bedtime Story
• Blake Tells the Tiger the Tale of the Tailor
• Epilogue

A Visit to William Blake's Inn has been set to music as a song cycle by American composer Dale Lyles.

References

• Willard, Nancy. A Visit to William Blake's Inn. Harcourt Brace & Company, 1981.