School
Gate blog: What children's book inspired you?
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explaining what makes a good school, see www.timesonline.co.uk/parentpower
Michael Rosen, children’s laureate and author of such illustrious titles as
Burping Bertha and Mustard, Custard, Grumble Belly and Gravy, would make a
jolly nice headmaster. There would be no recriminations when you failed your
spelling test or messed up your Sats mathematics paper. He would simply tear
up the exam sheet and thunder - as he is thundering to me now - his
passionately held belief that children should read more and swot less.
“Testing does something to children, and it does something to teachers. It
does something to the whole rhythm of education,” he says, flailing one of
his baboon-like arms. (His appearance has been likened to a Quentin Blake
illustration – long, baggy and slightly startled-looking.)
“As far as primary schools are concerned, there is no reason for Sats. They
get in the way of what I would call education. They ask questions of stories
that are almost irrelevant. The questions we should be asking are: ‘How do
you encourage litera-ture? How do you encourage poetry?’ Not: ‘How do you
count the adjectives in The Cat Sat on the Mat?’”
Rosen, who is 62, is the patron saint of the overtested child. For decades, he
has trawled like the Pied Piper around schools and literary events, enticing
children into the magical world of books. A vociferous critic of the current
education system, he believes that “futile” testing has reduced literature
to a series of tick-box exercises. The tragedy, Rosen believes, is that
children are no longer encouraged to love books.
“If you go into a staff room now, no one’s talking about children’s books;
they’re talking about tests. But if we want literacy standards to improve,
we should be creating book-loving schools.”
In this pursuit, Rosen is indefatigable. His schedule of appearances is booked
up months in advance. This afternoon, I have caught up with him at the
Barbican, where he has spent the morning cajoling a class of nine and
10-year-olds into writing poetry. How did they do? “Brilliantly,” he says.
One can see why children warm to him. He is infectiously enthusiastic, and
still looks a bit like a child himself in his jeans and Converse trainers.
And he is reassuringly rebellious. One of his poems, in an anthology called
No Breathing in Class, mocks a teacher who is so strict that she bans
breathing.
But Rosen is also ferociously hard-working. He has written 140-odd books, for
all ages. Younger readers know him for his picture books, such as Shoo! (“a
crafty cat with a cunning plan”), and his hugely successful We’re Going on a
Bear Hunt and Little Rabbit Foo Foo. But he has also written books about
Dickens and Shakespeare, and poetry.
He writes every day, and is constantly jotting down ideas. When I ask what
he’s been composing this week, he flourishes a notebook from the depths of
an anorak pocket.
“I wrote a poem about when my maths teacher took us all to Sadler’s Wells,” he
says “. . . and here’s one about my dad reading me Great Expectations . . .
and here’s a poem about my brother making electric train noises . . .” How
many poems can he write a day? “A couple.”
Rosen is the fifth person to be appointed children’s laureate - an idea that
grew out of a conversation between the children’s author Michael Morpurgo
and the then poet laureate, Ted Hughes. The title lasts for two years. Rosen
was a colourful choice as an outspoken socialist and (Jewish) antiZionist,
who was once a candidate for George Galloway’s Respect party. “I’ve always
been a socialist,” he says. “I like the idea of inclusion.”
His politics are rooted in his childhood in north London. His parents met each
other at the age of 16 when they were in the Young Communist League, and
both became teachers (his father, the late Harold Rosen, was attached to
London University’s Institute of Education). “[Life at home] was endlessly
curious, endlessly argumentative. I have a sense of my parents always
saying: ‘Hey! Come and look at this!’”
As a grammar school boy, Rosen at first wanted to be a polymath: “I’d
discovered Jonathan Miller, and I thought: ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful to know
all about science, and know all about art, and be funny and urbane and all
that.’” While reading English at Oxford, he won a Sunday Times drama
competition and had his play performed at London’s Royal Court theatre.
After graduating, he became a BBC trainee but was sidelined - reportedly for
being too left-wing. At that point, he returned to his first love - writing
- and in 1974, Andre Deutsch began publishing his children’s books.
Three decades on, does he think it is a good time for children’s fiction? “I
think it’s a terrific time because there’s so much there. Fantasy, or social
realism, or magical realism - it’s all being published.”
What would be his advice to an aspiring children’s writer? “Remind yourself of
what you liked as a child and why you liked it.”
In his early books, Rosen used his son Eddie - “a stand-up comedian as soon as
he could stand” - as his muse. Tragically, Eddie died from meningitis at the
age of 18. He had been feeling a bit groggy one evening and in the morning
his father found him dead. Did Rosen feel guilt? “Of course. I kept asking
myself: ‘Why didn’t I spot that it was meningitis?’” he says.
He confronted Eddie’s death in Sad Book (2004). “What makes me most sad is
when I think about my son Eddie,” the book begins. “He died. I loved him
very, very much but he died anyway.”
Did Rosen worry that the subject might upset his younger readers? “I wrote the
book because children kept asking me what had happened to Eddie, and I had
to say that he had died. You’d see the adults in the room freeze. They’d be
rigid, but the children would be much easier with it. I wanted to explain to
them what had happened.”
Rosen also wrote an adult book in the aftermath of Eddie’s death called
Carrying the Elephant. Did that help him come to terms with his grief?
“Writing about it helped me to see that I wasn’t the only person in the world
having these experiences.”
Did it change him as a writer? “It encouraged me to look at the life cycle in
a way which I hadn’t before. I wrote a poem recently which goes like this:
“. . . Hand in the sea, Feel the rhythm of the tide / Hand on your heart,
Feel the rhythm inside / Hand on the rhythm, Feel the rhythm of the rhyme /
Hand on your life, Feel the rhythm of time.” I wouldn’t have written that
last line if Eddie hadn’t died.”
Rosen, who has been married three times, has seven children - the youngest of
whom are seven and three. Did his grief ease when he became a father again?
“Yes, there is a way in which new children replace old ones. It’s not that you
don’t feel the sadness or the loss - it’s just that you have so much new joy
and new engagement. And there’s a sense in which you’re getting another
chance.”
His younger children will be battling their way through an increasingly
competitive education system - does he ever fear they could get left behind?
“Every parent fears that,” he says.
“But I’ve sat around with nine, 10, 11-year-olds, and you can see that while
some of them have wit and wisdom, only a number will have made the jump to
abstract thought - the jump that will help them to go somewhere, to stand
out, to do better. And there’s no mystery to working out who they are.
They’re the ones who read.”
