> Skip to content
  • Published: 20 November 2018
  • ISBN: 9781681372921
  • Imprint: NY Review Childrens
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 344
  • RRP: $32.99

The Adventures of Anatole



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.

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.

  • Published: 20 November 2018
  • ISBN: 9781681372921
  • Imprint: NY Review Childrens
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 344
  • RRP: $32.99

Also by Nancy Willard

See all

Praise for The Adventures of Anatole

"Nancy Willard's imagination--in verse or prose, for children or adults--builds castles stranger than any mad King of Bavaria ever built. She imagines with a wonderful concreteness. But also, she takes real language and by literal-mindedness turns it into the structure of dream." --Donald Hall, The New York Times

"Ms. Willard uses her poetic gifts to illuminate the ordinary events of life, and to transform the emotions of daily life--joy, sadness, loneliness and hope--into palpable, almost tactile images." --Michiko Kakutani

Praise for Nancy Willard's novel Things Invisible to See (1985):
"[Things Invisible to See] has the quality of a fairy tale ... a paradigm of life as a Manichean conflict between good and evil." --Susan Fromberg Schaeffer