Michael Rosen

At 77 years old, Michael Rosen has this physical status:

Michael Wayne Rosen (born 7 May 1946) is an English children's novelist, writer, and author of 140 books.

He served as Children's Laureate from June 2007 to June 2009.

He has worked as a television presenter and a political columnist.

Early life

Michael Wayne Rosen was born in Harrow, Middlesex, on May 7, 1946. His ancestors were Jews from Poland, Romania, and Russia, and his immediate family had ties to The Workers Circle and the Jewish Labour Bund. Wayne C. Booth, a literary critic who was billeted with his father at Shrivenham American University, was given his middle name in honor of him.

Harold Rosen, Rosen' father, was born in Brockton, Massachusetts, but he grew up in London's East End from the age of two after his mother left her father and returned to her native England. Harold attended Davent Foundation School and then Regent Street Polytechnic. He began teaching English to students before moving to London as a professor of English at the Institute of Education in London and writing extensively on the subject of teaching English to children.

Connie (née Isakofsky, 1920-1976) Rosen' mother worked as a secretary and later as a primary school teacher and tutor instructor at the University of Rochester. She had attended Central Foundation Girls' School, where she made friends such as Bertha Sokoloff. When both were 15, she met Harold in 1935, as they were both members of the Young Communist League. They were both involved in the Battle of Cable Street together. The couple married in Pinner, Middlesex, as a young couple. They left the Communist Party in 1957. Rosen was never interested in joining, but his parents' activities influenced his childhood. For example, Beatrice Hastings, a bohemian literary figure, made an impression on him as a child.

Rosen began attending Harrow Weald County Grammar School around the age of 11. He attended state schools in Pinner and Harrow, as well as the Watford Grammar School for Boys. "Wouldn't it be exciting to learn all about science and art, and be sociable and urbane, and all that?" Jonathan Miller said. His mother was then working for the BBC, and he was still working at it. She encouraged him to write for it and used some of his own work in a program based on poetry. "I went to Middlesex Hospital Medical School, jacked it in, and went on to complete a degree in English at Oxford University," he later said. I began working for the BBC before being fired, and I've been a freelance writer, broadcaster, lecturer, and performer ever since—that's to say, since 1972. The majority of my books have been written for children, but this isn't how I got off. "I started to get the feeling that writing was enjoyable and wanted to try out various styles of writing," I wrote satirical poems about people I knew about six months ago.

Personal life

Rosen has been married three times and has five children and two step-children. Eddie (1980–1999), his second son, died at the age of 18 from meningococcal septicaemia, and his death inspired Rosen's 2004 work Sad Book. Rosen and his third wife, Emma-Louise Williams, and their two children live in North London.

Rosen was admitted to hospital with a suspicion of COVID-19 in March 2020. He was moved from the ICU and back to a ward before being transferred to the ICU. After 47 days in the ICU, he had to leave the hospital. In June, he was moved to a geriatric ward at Whittington Hospital and returned home.

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Career

In 1969, Rosen graduated from Wadham College, Oxford, and became a graduate trainee at the BBC. Among the work that he did while there in the 1970s was presenting a series on BBC Schools television called Walrus (write and learn, read, understand, speak). He was also scriptwriter on the children's reading series Sam on Boffs' Island, but Rosen found working for the corporation frustrating: "Their view of 'educational' was narrow. The machine had decided this was the direction to take. Your own creativity was down the spout."

Despite previously having made no secret of his leftist views when he was originally interviewed for a BBC post, he was asked to go freelance in 1972, though in practice he was sacked despite several departments of the BBC wishing to keep employing him. In common with the China expert and journalist Isabel Hilton, among several others at this time, Rosen had failed the vetting procedures which were then in operation. This longstanding practice was only revealed in 1985, and by the time Rosen requested access to his files, they had been destroyed.

In 1974, Mind Your Own Business, his first book of poetry for children, was published. In due course, Rosen established himself with his collections of humorous verse for children, including Wouldn't You Like to Know, You Tell Me and Quick Let's Get Out of Here. Educationalist Morag Styles has described Rosen as "one of the most significant figures in contemporary children's poetry" and one of the first poets "to draw closely on his own childhood experiences and to 'tell it as it was' in the ordinary language children actually use".

Rosen played a key role in opening up children's access to poetry, both through his own writing and with important anthologies such as Culture Shock. He was one of the first poets to make visits to schools throughout the UK and further afield in Australia, Canada and Singapore. His tours continue to enthuse and engage school children about poetry in the present.

We're Going on a Bear Hunt is a children's picture book written by Rosen and illustrated by Helen Oxenbury. The book won the overall Nestlé Smarties Book Prize in 1989 and also won the 0–5 years category. The publisher, Walker Books, celebrated the work's 25th anniversary in 2014 by breaking a Guinness World Record for the Largest Reading Lesson.

In 1993, Rosen gained an MA in Children's Literature from the University of Reading and subsequently gained a PhD from the University of North London. Margaret Meek Spencer supervised his work and continued to support him throughout her life.

Rosen is well established as a broadcaster, presenting a range of documentary features on British radio. He is the presenter of BBC Radio 4's regular magazine programme Word of Mouth, which looks at the English language and the way it is used.

The English Association gave Michael Rosen's Sad Book (2004) an Exceptional Award for the Best Children's Illustrated Books of its year in the 4–11 age range. The book was written by Michael Rosen and illustrated by Quentin Blake. It deals in part with bereavement and followed the publication of Carrying the Elephant: A Memoir of Love and Loss, which was published in November 2002 after the death of his son Eddie (aged 18), who features as a child in much of his earlier poetry. Rosen's This Is Not My Nose: A Memoir of Illness and Recovery (2004) is an account of his ten years with undiagnosed hypothyroidism; a course of drugs in 1981 alleviated the condition.

In 2011, he collaborated with his wife, Emma-Louise Williams, to produce the film Under the Cranes, with Rosen providing the original screenplay (a play for voices called Hackney Streets), which Williams took as a basis with which to direct the film. It premiered at the Rio Cinema in Dalston, London, on 30 April 2011 as part of the East End Film Festival.

Rosen has previously taught children's literature on the MA in education studies at the University of North London and its successor institution, London Metropolitan University. He was formerly a visiting professor of children's literature at Birkbeck, University of London, where he taught children's literature and devised an MA in children's literature, which commenced in October 2010. Since September 2014, he has been at Goldsmiths, University of London, as professor of children's literature in the Department of Educational Studies, teaching an MA in children's literature.

He is also a patron of the Shakespeare Schools Festival, a charity that enables schoolchildren across the UK to perform Shakespeare in professional theatres.

Rosen was the subject of the BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs programme on 6 August 2006.

In March 2021, Rosen released the book Many Different Kinds of Love: A Story of Life, Death and the NHS, an account of his experience being hospitalised with COVID-19 a year earlier, including his own poem for the NHS 60th anniversary 'These are the Hands' being pinned to his bed or wall.

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