Michael J Rosen Popular Books

Michael J Rosen Biography & Facts

Michael Wayne Rosen (born 7 May 1946) is a British children's author, poet, presenter, political columnist, broadcaster, activist, and academic, who has written over 200 books for children and adults. Select books for children include We're Going on a Bear Hunt (1989) and Sad Book (2004). He served as Children's Laureate from June 2007 to June 2009. He won the 2023 PEN Pinter Prize, awarded by English PEN, for his "fearless" body of work. Early life and education Michael Wayne Rosen was born into a Jewish family in Harrow, Middlesex, on 7 May 1946. His ancestors were Jews from an area that is now Poland, Romania, and Russia, and his family had connections to The Workers Circle and the Jewish Labour Bund. His middle name was given to him in honour of Wayne C. Booth, a literary critic who was billeted with his father at Shrivenham American University. Rosen's father, educationalist Harold Rosen (1919–2008), was born in Brockton, Massachusetts, but grew up in the East End of London from the age of two after his mother left his father and returned to her native England. Harold attended Davenant Foundation School and then Regent Street Polytechnic. He was a secondary school teacher before becoming a professor of English at the Institute of Education in London and publishing extensively, especially on the teaching of English to children. Rosen's mother, Connie (née Isakofsky; 1920–1976), worked as a secretary at the Daily Worker and later as a primary school teacher and training college lecturer. She had attended Central Foundation Girls' School, where she made friends such as Bertha Sokoloff. She met Harold in 1935, when both were aged 15, as they were both members of the Young Communist League. They participated in the Battle of Cable Street together. As a young couple, they settled in Pinner, Middlesex. They left the Communist Party in 1957. Rosen never joined, but his parents' activities influenced his childhood. At around the age of 11, Rosen began attending Harrow Weald County Grammar School. He attended state schools in Pinner and Harrow, as well as Watford Grammar School for Boys. He also spent time as an exchange student at Winchester College in 1964, which he recalls fondly. Having discovered Jonathan Miller, he thought, "Wouldn't it be wonderful to know all about science, and know all about art, and be funny and urbane and all that?" His mother was then working for the BBC. Producing a programme featuring poetry, she persuaded him to write for it and used some of his material. He later said, "I went to Middlesex Hospital Medical School, started on the first part of a medical training, jacked it in and went on to do a degree in English at Oxford University. I then worked for the BBC until they chucked me out and I have been a freelance writer, broadcaster, lecturer, performer ever since—that's to say since 1972. Most of my books have been for children, but that's not how I started out. Sometime around the age of twelve and thirteen I began to get a sense that I liked writing, liked trying out different kinds of writing, I tried writing satirical poems about people I knew." 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 that 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.... Discover the Michael J Rosen popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Michael J Rosen books.