See, for example, "Michael Rosen tour highlights". Scottish Book Trust. Archived from the original on 20 December 2008 . Retrieved 26 November 2008. Kellaway, Kate (27 October 2002). "The children's poet who grew up: Michael Rosen talks about lone parenting, his new baby daughter – and the day his son died". The Observer. London. Archived from the original on 14 December 2013 . Retrieved 17 July 2010. 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.” Michael Rosen has got through lots of crises in his life including the death of his parents, his son, jobs and a close shave with death with Covid. He also had a long-term illness for over a decade without realising it and Jewish relatives who he discovered died in Nazi concentration camps. Their memories he unearthed from the fragments available to him to make sure they were not forgotten. Rosen says both books are a direct result of his brush with death. “After having Covid, I was in a state of reverie for at least three months. Forty days of having drugs put in you, plus Covid, will do that. In that reverie my mind was darting to and fro, thinking about Eddie, my mum, my dad and whether I would ever work again. In my mind, it sort of brought it all together.”

If anyone understands suffering, it is Rosen. In Getting Better, he documents the hardships he has faced, from Covid to the legacy of the Holocaust on his family (his two great-uncles were murdered in Auschwitz) to the premature deaths of his mother and his son, Eddie. It feels significant that, after decades spent telling mostly fictional stories for children, this is his second memoir in three years; the last one, 2021’s Many Different Kinds of Love, gave an account of Covid through the patient’s eyes, chronicling the days leading up to his hospitalisation, and latterly, his rehabilitation. That’s not to say that Rosen doesn’t ever feel sad or emotional. He gets tearful when he meets the nurses who looked after him in hospital, for instance. “I met one in a TV studio and I got really upset,” he recalls. “But I don’t think of that as a bad thing. I meet these people and this wave of feeling comes up – I don’t really know what it is, other than I’m saying, ‘How did you do it? How did you keep me alive?’ And they tell me, and it’s lovely.” RCN awards Honorary Fellowship to Michael Rosen following powerful speech at Congress | News | Royal College of Nursing". 9 June 2022. Archived from the original on 9 November 2022 . Retrieved 13 June 2022.Mansfield, Susan (24 August 2007), "Poetry is the greatest teacher", The Scotsman, archived from the original on 10 September 2007 . Rosen’s greatest coping method might be his tendency towards rigorous self-understanding; writing the book has been a way for him to process events. “One thing I say to kids is, ‘If you think of a thought as a ping-pong ball in your head – your head’s empty, and there’s a ping-pong ball bouncing around in there like it’s in a bottle, bing-bong, bing-bong – well, can you get the ping-pong ball outside your head so that it’s not making all of that noise?” ‘They talk about the talking cure. Well, there is a sort of doing cure, too.’ The photo of Rosen’s son Eddie, who died unexpectedly in 1999, at the age of just 18. Photograph: Pål Hansen/The Observer Michael Rosen at the 2017 Cheltenham Literature Festival signing his book, The Disappearance of Émile Zola.

Durrant, Sabine (6 September 2014). "Michael Rosen: Why curiosity is the key to life". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2 November 2014 . Retrieved 2 November 2014. In Getting Better, Rosen implies that coping is an everyday practice – we are coping even when we are unaware we are coping, and perhaps especially in those moments. Partway through our conversation I ask Rosen, “How have you coped?” hoping he might share some strategies, though he misunderstands the question.Rosen was born into a Jewish family in Harrow, Middlesex, with roots in what is now Poland, Russia, and Romania and connections to the Arbeter Ring and the Bund. a b c d "Michael Rosen interview". WriteWords Writers' Community. February 2004. Archived from the original on 2 April 2004 . Retrieved 17 January 2015. Michael Rosen – NTU Honorary Graduate – 22nd July 2010". YouTube . Retrieved 27 November 2012. [ dead YouTube link] Under the Cranes (23 November 2012). "Under the Cranes". Underthecranes.blogspot.com. Archived from the original on 29 June 2013 . Retrieved 27 November 2012. Rosen has been married three times, is the father of five children, and has two stepchildren. Eddie (1980–1999), his second son, died at the age of 18 from meningitis, and his death was the inspiration for Michael Rosen's Sad Book published in 2004. Rosen lives in North London with his third wife, Emma-Louise Williams, and their two children.

Another example of the government’s “crazed incompetence” in his view has been the handling of schools and universities during the pandemic, in particular the uncertainty surrounding exams. Both his parents were teachers, and he “imbibed” not just their socialist politics, but a passion for education (on which he writes regularly for the Guardian). He’s never been a fan of what he recently described in one of his columns as the “rigid, prescriptive, formulaic approach” of the primary school curriculum, and an “addiction” to exam testing. His youngest son Emile was due to be sitting his GCSEs this year and his daughter Elsie is in her first year at university, but has been at home until last month. “It is an awful situation for teachers, pupils and students to be in,” he says.Rosen was appointed the sixth British Children's Laureate in June 2007, succeeding Jacqueline Wilson, and held the honour until June 2009, when he was succeeded by Anthony Browne. Rosen signed off from the Laureateship with an article in The Guardian, in which he said: "Sometimes when I sit with children when they have the space to talk and write about things, I have the feeling that I am privileged to be the kind of person who is asked to be part of it". In 2007, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Exeter. The Missing also contains an excellent selection of recommended fiction, picture book and non-fiction reading about World War Two and the Holocaust, as well as books with themes of refugees and displacement more widely.

East London on film, East End Film Festival". BFI. May 2011. Archived from the original on 3 August 2012 . Retrieved 23 February 2013. Rosen was appointed the sixth British Children's Laureate in June 2007, succeeding Jacqueline Wilson, and held the honour until June 2009, when he was succeeded by Anthony Browne. Rosen signed off from the Laureateship with an article in The Guardian, in which he said, "Sometimes when I sit with children when they have the space to talk and write about things, I have the feeling that I am privileged to be the kind of person who is asked to be part of it". In 2007, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Exeter.

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Ian McMillan's writing lab: Michael Rosen interview". OpenLearn. 26 January 2007 . Retrieved 12 March 2014. . He is also a patron of the Shakespeare Schools Festival, a charity that enables schoolchildren across the UK to perform Shakespeare in professional theatres. University News" (PDF). Exeter.ac.uk. Archived (PDF) from the original on 28 July 2013 . Retrieved 27 November 2012. The 74-year-old writer is very much alive on Zoom where, after a few technical hitches, he appears on screen seemingly as energetic as ever, his conversation an engaging ragbag of rants and anecdotes, ranging from King Lear to last night’s football match, even if names escape him occasionally. In real life, as has often been remarked, Rosen resembles the BFG, or at least Quentin Blake’s giant, all long limbs, extravagant ears and messy lines. “You’d have to ask Quentin. He’s never said: ‘By the way you are the BFG’,” he says of the illustrator with whom he has collaborated since 1974. “I think he was partly inspired by Dahl himself.” Comedian Cariad Lloyd said of this book that it’s “like having a cup of tea and a chat with Michael himself”, and I’d have to agree. There’s no ego here, no ulterior motive, and he’s not trying to prove anything. It’s just him talking about his own experience and how he might be able to help others, and its just warming, humorous, silly, natural, and above all, honest. Really honest. And we all need that.