Michael Rosen on books and their legacy of hope

By Barbara Hodgson, The Journal

BOOKS, the whole book and nothing but the book. Former children’s laureate Michael Rosen talks to BARBARA HODGSON about a truly important part of education.

IF you needed any evidence of how a well-written story – no matter its subject – can engage with children, you’ll find it at Seven Stories Centre for Children’s Books.

A short film, incorporated into its current Judith Kerr exhibition, shows primary school pupils’ response to her book When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, Kerr’s semi-autobiographical story of a young Jewish girl who flees Nazi Germany in 1933.

The pupils met 86-year-old Kerr – who’s also written an Out of the Hitler Time trilogy for older children – when she came to open her exhibition and this resulting film reveals their interest in her experience.

That it struck such a chord with young children came as no surprise to Michael Rosen, who knows more than a thing or two about connecting with youngsters through stories. As part of Holocaust Memorial Week, the children’s novelist and poet was in Newcastle on Thursday night to view the film and give a talk to teachers.

Rosen – who handed over his children’s laureate baton to Anthony Browne last year – regularly visits schools and is on a mission to see “whole books” back on the agenda.

“I want to stress the importance of reading whole books in the classroom,” he says, “because the point about them is that they deal with ideas and feelings; they’re designed to engage our attention.

“But somewhere in the mainstream reform of education came the emphasis on educating children with worksheets.” Worksheet teaching has seen a resurgence over the past 10 years, he says and he can’t understand it.

“I don’t know who thought worksheets were more important than books –- there’s wisdom in books and they’re dealing with truths.”

After all – following recent concerns highlighted in the news about the impact on children of TV coverage of the Haiti disaster – books, even touching on such subjects as the Holocaust, are a vital tool in education. It’s just knowing how to deal with the subject.

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, says Rosen, is a “brilliantly written book and accessible to children”. Even if the young know nothing of this bleak episode in history, they can relate to themes – refugee children, suggests Rosen, fleeing their homes.

“What schools can do – in a really helpful way – is talk about this stuff”: like the third point of a triangle, he says, between the child and parents. They can ask children questions such as “do you know anyone who might feel what this character is feeling?”

Of course age and how a subject is deal with are important. Young ones might get scared that a situation they hear about could happen to them. “ Take the story of Noah and the flood – a four-year-old might think a rainy day is the first of the 40 days and nights”.

Rosen says he looks around classrooms sometimes and wonders where the excitement and stimulation is. Some of them, concerned with fulfilling the requirements of Ofsted and league tables, take a management of children role to extremes. “But I’m not saying schools should be full of kids running around!”

But teachers in general are more keen now to find new ways of making things interesting. A good sign has to be that Thursday’s talk for teachers – entitled Children’s Books and a Legacy of Hope – was a sell-out.

Rosen is currently working on a new book, in a three-way collaboration which includes a musician. That’s the kind of thing he means: the importance of thinking a little differently. And the importance of whole books.

The exhibition: From The Tiger Who Came to Tea to Mog and Pink Rabbit, a Judith Kerr Retrospective runs at Seven Stories, Ouseburn Valley, Newcastle, until May 12. It features the author illustrator’s life-story, and work such as Mog and The Tiger Who Came To Tea.