A Visit to William Blake's Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers

By Nancy Willard and Alice Provensen

Inspired by William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, this delightful collection of poetry for children brings to life Blake’s imaginary inn and its unusual guests.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Aug 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9780547546315

Nancy Willard

Nancy Willard has loved William Blake’s poetry from the day she first heard it. While writing the poems in this book, she built a six-foot model of the inn, decorating it with moons, suns, stars, and prints of Blake’s paintings. The model with its residents—the characters that appear in this volume—stands in her living room. Nancy Willard published her first book when a high school senior—an inset in the Horn Book, which was called A Child’s Star. Formerly a lecturer in the English department at Vassar College, she is the author of a number of well-received children’s books, including Sailing to Cythera: And Other Anatole Stories and The Island of the Grass King: The Further Adventures of Anatole, both winners of a Lewis Carroll Shelf Award. 

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Reviews for A Visit to William Blake's Inn

[trinker-2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Asher and I have declared this book to be "cozy". High praise from both of us.

[thornton37814 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This Newbery-winning and Caldecott finalist collection of poetry honors poet William Blake. Many of the poems reference Blake's poems so it is probably most appreciated by those familiar with his poetry. The author's set-up is an inn honoring the bard, visited by various persons and animals. It makes me want to pick up Blake's work to read in the near future, possibly for poetry month in April.

[acahil3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Summary:This collection of poems is inspired by William Blake's "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience." The poems reflect Blake's imaginary inn and all of the unusual guests that come to stay.Review:Willard uses the genre of poetry when targeting the interests of travelers. William Blake and his inn is a common topic that many readers of the targeted age group are familiar with, and therefore they are able to hear this story through a different genre than it is usually portrayed.

[lbblackwell · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Inspired by William Blake's poetry, Nancy Willard creates an imaginary inn that Blake himself runs. With fantastic images accompanying them, her poems tell the stories of the travelers who visit the inn. Great allusions to Blake's Songs of Experience and Songs of Innocence.

[jcarroll12 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Awesome introduction to William Blake's biography and his poetry! Although I do not teach this poet in my curriculum, I would love to share this with the British lit teachers who often express how Blake can be challenging.

[desirichter · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Wonderful Illustrations steal the show in this book of poems, animated by animals from Blakes own poems.

[elenchus_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Willard somehow manages to capture the ideal of William Blake without directly borrowing anything specific from his poems, that I could discern. (I didn't have Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience at my elbow, and probably should have.) Some reviewers indicate the poems are revisions of Blake's, others they are merely inspired by Blake's own: need to confirm.Reminiscent of Master Snickup's Cloak in that the immediate impression of weight or innovation can't be pinned down to anything in particular, but still I'm left thinking this is something pretty special. Though with Snickup, it was primarily the art work, and with Willard it's both her poetry and the Provensen's artwork.Willard brings in whimsical animal characters, who interact and speak with people, but again, the effect is not so much Pooh or Seuss or Peter Pan ... more a Mona Lisa smile than a laugh or snicker. As of a world-weary adult reminding themselves of the importance of magic, and imagination. For example, a Tiger features throughout, with Tyger, tyger burning bright quoted in the forward, but nothing more is done to link them, apart from keeping the Tiger's antics from becoming overly quaint or cutesy.Written longer ago than first I thought: 1981, winning Caldecott and Newbery awards for 1982. Perhaps recently reprinted as it surfaced more than once in the last year for me.

[abrinkman_10 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was pleasantly surprised by the whimsical poetic take on William Blake and his poetry that Nancy Willard achieved in A Visit to William Blake's Inn. While the book captured the essence of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, "Tyger, Tyger, Burning bright...", Willard magically enhanced them for a child's introduction to those works with playful beasts, the poet as the master of majestic inn, and easily accessible poetry in four line stanzas with rhyming couplets. For example:Two mighty dragons brew and bakeand many are the loaves they've burned and are the spits they've turned and many those who stop and break their joyful bread with William Blake. The musical quality of Nancy Willard's poetry is delightful to read aloud and the illustrations that usually encompass the full two page layout are detailed water color line drawings which capture the dress and architecture of the romantic period. The book is rather long, forty-five pages, but Willard broke up individuals poems under pseudo (perhaps) chapter titles, thus giving the reader the ability to stop after one or at least to break up the book into shorter reading sessions. What I find so interesting about this book and would use in the classroom, especially a high school one, is the way in which she was able to take a nearly two hundred year old, sometimes very complicated to understand poetry, and put them into a new format. The assignment: To take a poem (and everyone would have the same poem) and have to create a poem in response. The response could by translating the poem into modern english or rap, or creating a conversational response as Ralegh did to Marlowe's The Passionate Shepherd to his love. The assignment would not only force the students to examine the poem closely, it would also hopefully give them a sense that they were in control of it and thus alleviating any fear they have to reading or examining poems. Nancy Willard's A Visit to William Blake's Inn could stand as a wonderful example of one way to create a response - by making an assigned poem into a children's poem.

[krystalramirez · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Summary: Many poems, almost every poem refers to an animal in some way, either how an animal sounds, what it does, or what it is. Newbery award winner.Personal reaction: I liked this book of poems. There are several different stories told through these poems. Classroom extensions1) Every child can write a poem and create a classroom poem book.2) Read 1 poem at a time and draw pictures that we see in our minds as we read the different stories.

[manich01 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This delightful collection of Romantic poems, revisions from William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, are nonsense (or philosophy, in disguise!) sure to spark the imagination. Use this as an introduction to the traits of Romantic writing, including formal meter & rhyme, mood, and symbolism as well as intuition and the sublime.

[tjsjohanna_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What a fun collection of poems inspired by WilliamBlake. There is a feeling of whimsy and definite references to Mr. Blake's poems. The illustrations are particularly nice.

[mildred981 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A visit to William Blakes End is a group of magical poems about life in a imaganery inn, ran by William Blake. The inn is staffed with two dragons, two angels, and a rabbit whom do human like tasks. Throughout the story theres funny phrases that will keep young children entertained. Such as "His wife not to grow fat like a common kitchen cat and two sunflowers who demand a room with a view."This a a very wonderful group of poems, that are vividly illustratred to help unfold the story. If you love animals this will be a great book for you.A fun activity to do with this book, would be to have your class put on a play with puppets two react the poems. Also, you can have class find rhyming words to fit in poem.

[debnance_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Am I missing something? Why in the world was this book chosen for the Newbery? What do any of these poems have to do with William Blake? Did he have an inn? If he did not have a real inn, what is meant by his imaginary inn? Tedious. Boring, boring, boring.I must find someone who loves this book to share what he loves about it.

[dushiyanthimccarley · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The book is a collection of poems about William Blakes Inn. The poems were written two hundred years ago by William Blake. The poems all deal with travellers who come to the Inn, and the Inn is run by two dragons, two angeles and a rabiit. Some of the guests include the man in the marmalade hat, the king of cats, and two sunflowers who request a "room with a view". I liked this book because the poems were simple and humourous. There were lots of pictures that helped iilustrated the poems, so for young children who may not be interested in poetry this will could keep their attetion. Extension ideas 1. In the classroom after reading this book I would have the students write about four lines of their own poem. It does not have to be something long, but something simple for children to enjoy writting. 2. I would read one of the poems in the book without showing them the picture and have the students paint a picture by themselves of what we read.

[goodnightmoon_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I love the idea of this book, but I found the actual poems inaccessible. I could see a younger child enjoying the dreaminess of the pictures, but the poems themselves have difficult syntax and strange premises - too complex to be enjoyed by an older child.

[juliette07_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This was one of the first Newbery winners I wanted to get hold of. I loved the idea of reading this book but was disappointed. It seems to me that it is a book written with a view to adults enjoying it. I wondered if there is an element of the time in which it was written. I am certain my young children would not have been at all captivated by this book in the 1980s. The illustrations were interesting but again not, in my opinion aimed at young readers. I worked hard to re read the rhymes and look more carefully at the illustrations but sadly came to the conclusion that this is not a book I would recommend.