So They Call You Pisher!: A Memoir

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Jardine, Cassandra (21 June 2007), "As teenagers, my boys read football programmes ...", The Daily Telegraph ; and biographical information provided by Michael Rosen on 19 December 2007. a b c d Styles, Morag (July 1988). "Authorgraph No 51 – Michael Rosen". Books for Keeps: The Children's Book Magazine (51) . Retrieved 21 August 2008. [ dead link]. This is as much a book about finding the words to express our troubles as it is about the author’s life and Rosen, who is professor of children’s literature at Goldsmiths, University of London, is a generous teacher. We feel his doubts, his uncertainty and his curiosity. “I’m right at the very edge of what I understand,” he says, but in writing, in sharing, in striving for meaning, he offers readers a lifeline, and shows them they are not going through it alone. Busby, Mattha (23 May 2020). "Author Michael Rosen out of intensive care after 47 days". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 5 June 2020 . Retrieved 5 June 2020. In April 2010, Rosen was given the Fred and Anne Jarvis Award from the National Union of Teachers for "campaigning for education". In July 2010 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Nottingham Trent University.

Rosen, Harold (5 August 2008). "Harold Rosen: A Rebel from the East End [interview]". Socialist Worker. Archived from the original on 15 August 2008 . Retrieved 21 August 2008. Michael Rosen – NTU Honorary Graduate – 22nd July 2010". YouTube . Retrieved 27 November 2012. [ dead YouTube link] A fascinating family memoir and a very personal story about terrible loss, The Missing describes the impact of the Holocaust on one family, and in doing so, shows children that what happened to the Rosens–the missing great uncles and aunts, but also the displacement of the rest of the family, and their grief for the missing–also happened to millions of others.

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In 2021, Rosen received the annual J.M. Barrie Lifetime Achievement Award from the charity Action for Children's Arts, "in recognition of his tremendous work championing the arts for children as well as his achievements as a performer and author." Many Different Kinds of Love follows a familiar Rosen format – an anthology of “Bits and Stuff”. As well as the poems, there is a letter written by a GP friend who sent him straight to A&E, extracts from his “patient’s diary” recorded by nurses and care-workers while he was in intensive care, and messages from his wife Emma, very much the heroine of the story. The result reflects how being in hospital “jumbles up your memories and perceptions, there’s no chronology to it”, and also his habit of jotting things down “to have a conversation with myself on paper” as a way of coping with “strange and weird” events. I guess I have sad thoughts every day. But I try not to be overcome by them’: Michael Rosen. Photograph: Pål Hansen/The Observer

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. [15] The publisher, Walker Books, celebrated the work's 25th anniversary in 2014 by breaking a Guinness World Record for the Largest Reading Lesson. [16]Michael Wayne Rosen [2] was born into a Jewish family in Harrow, Middlesex, [3] on 7 May 1946. [4] His ancestors were Jews from an area that is now Poland, Romania, and Russia, [3] and his family had connections to The Workers Circle and the Jewish Labour Bund. [5] 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. [2] 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. [20] Was it difficult, revisiting past traumas? “Actually, no. I get a buzz out of writing, in particular writing things so that they feel the way they were – the posh word for that is authentic. So even when I’m writing about something utterly awful, like pulling Eddie out of the bed when he had rigor mortis, so that his arm was in the air – that is a scene that has played in front of my eyes over and over again. But for me to articulate that [on paper] is quite a peaceful thing.” His new collection of prose poems, Many Different Kinds of Love, with drawings by Chris Riddell, is his attempt to make sense of those missing weeks last year: “It’s just gone. You can’t quite deal with it.” He felt as if he was in a “portal”: his hospital bed liminal, like the train in Harry Potter or the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland, he says, his body “an unreliable narrator”. It is about “what it feels like to be seriously ill, what it feels like to nearly die, and what does recovery mean?” He likes to say that he is “recovering” rather than “recovered”. Covid has left him with “drainpipes” (Xen tubes) in his eyes, a hearing aid in one ear, missing toenails, a strange sandiness to his skin and he suffers from dizziness, breathlessness and “everything gets a bit fuzzy every now and then”. Since Covid, the vision in Rosen’s left eye has been impaired. His left ear is what he describes as “a dead loss”. Every now and then he will experience a sudden shooting pain that chases itself around his body – one moment it’s in the knee, then the shoulder, then the hip. (“Boing!” he says, “and it’s moved on.”) It has taken Rosen until recently to feel accepting of this new physical state. The body changes, he says, and the brain must catch up. Still, he seems sanguine about it all, particularly the eye. “I could wear a patch and it would be much better,” he says. “But do I want to walk around wearing a patch?” He shakes his head, thinking of the schoolchildren he sometimes reads his poems to. “I don’t fancy it.” It’s more than two years since he left hospital after a near-lethal battle with Covid