Nancy Willard, Prolific Children’s Book Author, Dies at 80
Ms. Willard’s 1982 picture book, “A Visit to William Blake’s Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers,” illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen, was the first volume of poetry to receive the Newbery Medal and also a Caldecott Honor as one of the best illustrated books of the year. It was the first time a Newbery winner was also named a Caldecott book.
“Nancy Willard’s imagination — in verse or prose, for children or adults — builds castles stranger than any mad King of Bavaria ever built,” the poet Donald Hall wrote in The New York Times Book Review in 1981. “She imagines with a wonderful concreteness. But also, she takes real language and by literal-mindedness turns it into the structure of dream.”(The New York Times).
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