The former children’s laureate who has enjoyed a red letter year on striving for happiness, the secret to writing for kids, and which book he wants for Christmas
Michael Rosen is extraordinary. At 77, our former children’s laureate has written, or had a hand in, more than 200 books, but it is the quality of the work that counts: enduringly funny, light yet deep. When we meet, he brings along a mini-library of his recently published titles, including his latest memoir, Getting Better, and a reassuring picture book, The Big Dreaming, and The Incredible Adventures of Gaston le Dog, for older children, and a volume of which he is especially proud, the French translation of his poems about migration: On the Move. It has been a red letter year for Rosen, not least because he was awarded the Pen Pinter prize for a “fearless body of work”.
Has surviving Covid changed your life (the vision in his left eye is impaired, his left ear ditto) and your approach to writing?
I keep having ideas… so I write them down. But I do have some problems with memory. The period before I went into the induced coma is blurry. People tell me things like: “Hey, you remember that time there was an anniversary for your book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt?” And I go, “No”, and they say: “Yes, there was a great big cake with all the characters made out of marzipan in a big room at Southbank?” I’ve completely wiped it. It has made me more of an existentialist than ever. We are born into history. But there’s another way in which we are in the moment. Having loss of memory gives me even more of a sense I’m right in the now.
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