A Visit to William Blake's Inn

A Visit to William Blake's Inn Summary | Plot Summary

A Visit to William Blake's Inn is a Newberry and Caldecott Book Award-winning children's book of poetry by a beloved children's book author and Vassar lecturer. Using some of William Blake's most venerated characters and rhythmic and rhyme patterns mirroring William Blake's, this cleverly illustrated, slim volume is imbued with Blake's most pervasive quality, a sense of fun, delight, and other-worldliness.

This is a collection of loosely related poems for children, which makes it a small but intense and delightful book. There is no actual plot line. However, well-loved Blake-ish characters, such as the dragons, the angels, the rabbit, the cat, and even the King of Cats all appear throughout the verses in relation to the Inn. The poems are additionally linked by the beautiful illustrations of the Inn imagined to belong to Blake, drawings which are done on yellow-tinged paper with color marks resembling handmade or onionskin paper. The style of the paintings resembles 18th century illustrations that might have been appropriate in Blake's time.