Things Invisible to See

A Novel

Nancy Willard

The first novel by Newbery Award–winning author Nancy Willard: A stunning story of magic and miracles, and a testament to the enduring power of faith and love Ben and Willie Harkissian are twin brothers (think Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau) growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on the eve of World War II. A baseball launched into the October sky sets in motion a series of events that transforms many lives. Ben leaves for the front and faces death—figuratively as well as literally. Left behind is Clare Bishop, who has been paralyzed from the waist down. But in exchange she receives some very special gifts. She can see the future, be at one with animals, and chat with Death. Willie Harkissian remains in Michigan as well, though his relationship with his brother will never be the same. A love story interrupted by war, this is also a novel about discovering the ordinary in the extraordinary and finding the miraculous in everyday life.

A Nancy Willard Reader

Selected Poetry and Prose

Nancy Willard

Selections from Nancy Willard’s acclaimed volumes of poetry and prose This diverse collection features some of Nancy Willard’s most critically lauded poetry—including works from her Newbery Medal–winning volume, A Visit to William Blake’s Inn—as well as her short fiction and four unconventional essays on writing. Hens, children, magic bottles, and the moon are just some of the characters running through the luminous musings gathered here. “How to Stuff a Pepper” becomes a heady discourse on the thoughts and sleeping habits of peppers. “The Doctrine of the Leather-Stocking Jesus” and “The Hucklebone of a Saint” are tales about the power of superstition to shape our lives. Other stories showcase favorite Willard themes about God, religion, and the magic and mysticism in everyday life—and the ancestors, guardians, saints, and spirits who, in Willard’s words, come back “once in a while to keep an eye on us, the living.” A paean to the power of storytelling, A Nancy Willard Reader is an essential volume for poetry and fiction lovers.

19 Masks for the Naked Poet

Nancy Willard

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In the Salt Marsh

Poems

Nancy Willard

In this strong, appealing collection, Nancy Willard shares her passion for observing the mysteries of the natural world, particularly the flora and fauna of Cape Cod and the Hudson Valley, where many of these poems are set. We see, through her eyes, the coming of darkness to an empty orchard, the retreat of deer at dusk, and the breakup of a river with the onset of spring. Willard is also deeply engaged with the living creatures that populate her world. Her poems record her encounter with a moon snail and her celebration of the ladybugs she sends into the garden and the butterflies that alight on her shoulders like ghostly kisses. Amid poems about the intimate presence of nature are expressions of absences deeply felt. Willard is drawn not just to the inhabited world but also to the empty spaces with which our passage through life is strewn. In “The Absence at the Swing,” a rabbit watches a swing’s back-and-forth motion just after the children have left the playground; in “Niche Without Statue,” she takes us to “an alcove scoured / to stucco light” and tells us, “Somebody lived here. Stepped away. No tracks.” We learn, too, of the presences she misses most deeply, as in “Phone Poem,” in which she imagines receiving a telephone call from her father after his death. Whether she is cultivating a sense of the life that is all around her or attending to the losses felt within, Nancy Willard never ceases to enchant us with the sense of dedication and awe that graces her verse.

A Visit to William Blake's Inn

Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers

Nancy Willard

A collection of poems describing the curious menagerie of guests who arrive at William Blake's inn.

Night Story

Nancy Willard

A small boy tells about the fantastic events that may or may not have really occurred during his night's sleep when he took the night train to the country where nothing lasts.

Swimming Lessons

Selected Poems

Nancy Willard

This marvelous collection brings together the finest of Nancy Willard’s work Transporting us from Michigan farm country to the streets of New York, from a family picnic by a stream to snow-covered fields peopled by angels, the poems gathered here represent the best of Nancy Willard. Willard’s gift for peeling back everyday existence to reveal something magical and wondrous is everywhere in evidence here. Ordinary trees become surreal landscapes “fanning the fire in their stars” and “spraying fountains of light.” Poems featuring Great Danes, donkeys, and rabbits reveal Willard’s love for all living creatures. “How to Stuff a Pepper” and “A Psalm for Running Water” coexist with poems about visits from God. The title poem tells the story of Willard at seven, while “Questions My Son Asked Me, Answers I Never Gave Him” explores the joys and pitfalls of being a mother. Offering imagery from mythical goddesses to pumpkin saints to wise jellyfish, these are poems of astonishing imagination and grace, and will introduce a new generation of readers to Willard’s remarkable body of work.

The Adventures of Anatole

Nancy Willard

Newbery Medal-winning author Nancy Willard's trilogy of adventure tales, now in one volume. Children won't be able to put down these stories of the journeys of a boy and his orange cat, Plumpet. Anatole has a knack for seeking and finding adventure, often with Plumpet, his orange cat, who is accustomed to ghost trains, amnesiac soldiers, flying horses, and wallpaper portals, just a few of the enchantments encountered along the way. From his perilous search for wild fennel to cure his grandmother’s asthma, to his high-stakes game of checkers to save his uncle from a wizard’s evil spell, Anatole’s missions will keep young readers turning the pages of this omnibus edition of the Newbery Medal–winning author Nancy Willard’s trilogy of fantasy tales: Sailing to Cythera, The Island of the Grass King, and Uncle Terrible. David McPhail’s pen-and-ink illustrations throughout are beautifully detailed engagements with Willard’s world of make-believe. Anatole may be small but he is determined to right the wrongs he finds in each of the lands he enters. Whether kindness or evil will prevail is a matter of suspense, but Anatole is always on the side of the light.

A Visit to William Blake's Inn

Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers

Nancy Willard

A collection of poems describing the curious menagerie of guests who arrive at William Blake's inn.

The Island of the Grass King

The Further Adventures of Anatole

Nancy Willard

Anatole embarks on a fantastical journey to the island where the wild fennel grows.

Water Walker

Nancy Willard

Willard creates pictures of daily life. Includes a spalm, a hym, a meditation, a song, and fablelike series of poems on the sports pages of newspapers.

The Sea at Truro

Poems

Nancy Willard

From the acclaimed poet of In the Salt Marsh comes a dazzling collection about the magic hiding in the ordinary days of our past and present. Willard turns a keen eye on the natural world that witnesses these revelations, and the myriad, often surprising ways in which it intersects with our own human lot. Willard shows us time and again that “In me nothing of childhood is lost.” She recaptures for us not only the fleeting, distant shreds of a charmed, innocent youth, but brings back the people who have been loved and lost. She tells us of the man whose sister appears to him the night after her memorial service, and of the time her grandfather called her mother three days after he died, “. . . and she with her arms full / of wind-washed laundry / just freed from the line.” She gives back to us Walt Whitman, “eating / his supper from a sheet of brown paper.” She lends voice not only to the loved ones with whom we have parted ways but also to the plant and animal lives that remain a mystery to us despite our close proximity to them. In her able hands “the potato opens its eyes” and the dragonfly stands “well mannered and cautious.” Whether she is musing “What it is to be that crow,” bringing us “the gossip of ants,” or noting that “The sea reads slowly, as old men in libraries / follow the news . . .,” Willard brings extraordinary empathy to every subject she touches, creating fascinating new worlds from the ordinary staples of our daily existence. Finally, she plumbs the ultimate union between the human and natural worlds that she brings into such sharp focus. Grave Last year four men planted you under a stone. Today I plant the dumpy heart of a narcissus. Sharing your bed, it will wake up singing.

Simple Pictures are Best

Nancy Willard

A shoemaker and his wife being photographed for their wedding anniversary keep adding items to the picture despite the photographer's admonition that "Simple pictures are best".

The Mouse, the Cat, and Grandmother's Hat

Nancy Willard

This is Grandmother's hat. This is the mouse that hid under Grandmother's hat. This is the cat that waits to be fed . . . So begins a birthday party that is filled with surprises. Open this book--you're invited too!

The Three Mouths of Little Tom Drum

Nancy Willard

Lack of self-control has shocking consequences, but inventiveness carries the day in a contemporary fairy tale from Newbery Medalist Nancy Willard, with art by Kevin Hawkes. Little Tom Drum loves strawberry pie so much that he creeps down to the kitchen at night to get one more slice of that sweet, flaky goodness resting on the windowsill in the moonlight . . . pie his mother made for tomorrow’s birthday party. If only he had thought twice! Bearing the marks of his greediness, Tom Drum resigns himself to a reclusive life, but soon gains fame as a child inventor. Can his imagination and ingenuity lead to his own reinvention? Kevin Hawkes’s comical illustrations, brimming with creativity, add to the fantastic and the cautionary in this original fairy tale by award-winning poet Nancy Willard.

The Flying Bed

Nancy Willard

A greedy baker buys his wife a magic bed that flies them to the master baker, where they are given special yeast that helps their bakery become, for a while, the most popular in Florence.

The Voyage of the Ludgate Hill

Travels with Robert Louis Stevenson

Nancy Willard

A poem inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson's letters describes how the author and his wife survived a stormy ocean voyage with a shipload of exotic animals.

The Well-Mannered Balloon

Nancy Willard

James' balloon is very well-mannered until the middle of the night when it develops a voracious appetite.

The Tortilla Cat

Nancy Willard

When all five Romero children get sick, a magical cat appears in the night and cures them of their fevers.

Testimony of the Invisible Man

William Carlos Williams, Francis Ponge, Rainer Maria Rilke, Pablo Neruda

Nancy Willard

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