The True Story of the making of the book of 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' - please note the legal implications.

Please note a new 'find' from a commenter on substack (Alec Muffett): a printed version of 'Bear Hunt'/'Lion Hunt' from 1955. See end of this blog for the link. 

Folkore and children's books

I've done this before but as some people on social media seem bothered about the matter, I'll explain it again. But first, a word or two about folklore and children's books. For at least two hundred years, collectors, writers and editors have put 'traditional', 'anonymous' or 'folk' stories, rhymes and songs into books directed at children. The most famous of these is the one we know as 'Grimms' Fairy Tales' or some such. The Brothers Grimm collected stories and adapted them. Another famous collector, adapter and editor was Andrew Lang. If you go to google images and put in, say, Andrew Lang and 'Blue Fairy Book' you can see that on the cover it says simply 'Andrew Lang' but on the title page it says 'Edited by Andrew Lang'.

'Retold by...'

Some people on social media  (eg Yehudit bat Gitel) seem bothered that this format was copied for 'Bear Hunt'. That's to say,  on the cover it says 'Michael Rosen' and 'Helen Oxenbury' but inside of the hardcover first edition (and all subsequent hardcover editions) and in the full format paperback version, it says 'Retold by Michael Rosen'.  The board book version which doesn't have the usual endpapers does not have 'retold by Michael Rosen'. Though I didn't have a conversation about this at the time,  the publishers used the Andrew Lang format for the hardback and full-format paperback versions. Yehudit bat Galit wrote on Twitter (as it was then): 'Rosen didn't write Bear Hunt'. The only original thing about the book is the illustrations'. To which David Hirsh (now Professor David Hirsh)  replied: 'Ah, interesting. I didn't know.' The comment 'the only original thing about the book is the illustrations' is not true (see below) . David Hirsh's agreement with bat Gitel's comment implicates him in the untruth. I tried correcting these comments in the place where they were made (Twitter) but neither of these two people have removed their tweets. 

Objections and history of 'Bear Hunt'

Some people (in particular someone using the pseudonym on X (formerly Twitter) of 'Gurujuish' ) feel that they have discovered some previously unknown link to a source for 'Bear Hunt' ie a 1983 version in the Smithsonian collection in the US performed beautifully by Linda Goss with children participating. Her version is with obstacles of a tree (not in mine) , a river, a cornfield (not in mine), a 'lah dee dee da dee' (not in mine) and a cave. The obstacles in my and Helen's book are grass, river, mud, snowstorm, forest and cave. The obstacles are not given descriptions in Linda Goss's version (they are in mine) and mostly the moves through the obstacles are done with noises not words. I provided onomatopoeic words. Linda Goss's repeated line is 'can't go over it, can't go around it,' (different from mine which are 'We can't go over it, we go under it') till it gets to the 'cornfield' (not in mine)  which they go 'through'. In my version it is always 'We can't go over it, we can't go under it, we've got to go through it'.  At the cave, the Linda Goss version takes you to 'feel something' and after they realise it's a bear, they run home (with no words, just noises made by slapping legs) - mine recounts the story backwards with words and onomatopoeic words, and the last line in Linda Goss's version is 'we were lucky that time' (Mine is 'We're not going on a bear hunt again').  Linda Goss's version is a great version. Very different from the ones that I got to know, as I'll explain in a moment and different from mine. That in itself is evidence that I didn't hear her version after (long after) we produced our version. 

Just to be clear, I didn't ever hear Linda Goss's version when I was giving my version to the publisher some time in around 1986 or 87. The first time I heard Linda Goss's version was in 2024. The book that Helen Oxenbury and I made for Walker Books, came out in 1989. 

There are other online folk who pop up and 'reveal' that they've discovered a truth about 'Bear Hunt' (our version) that they think they're telling the world about. A recent one comes from someone calling herself 'The Duchess of Dalston' says that I say on the book that I 'adapted' it. Sorry to be pedantic, but no, it says 'retold by'. She also says that I adapted it from an 'American folk song'. No, I didn't. See below for the exact and true story. 

What version or versions had I heard? 

The main one was one sung by the Scots folksinger Alison McMorland who produced an album 'Funny Family' in 1977 (five years before Linda Goss's version) and who I booked to sing 'Bear Hunt' on a show I wrote for Channel Four in the early 80s ('Everybody Here'). This series was also before Linda Goss's recording. We made that series from 1981-1983 and Alison sang her 1977 version on the programme.

 It doesn't matter how often 'Gurujuish' or anyone else repeats the idea that I learnt 'Bear Hunt' from the wonderful Linda Goss, it's a lie. 

 Further, as I've explained, my and Alison's versions are very different from Linda Goss's version. 

I had also heard versions sung by the Brownies (Girl Guide movement) earlier but their version was a 'Lion Hunt'. *** [see below for an update on that.] The Brownies' versions go back to at least the 1950s. 

Alison explained to me that her 1977 version was her version of an American version (!)  and had been devised in US  summer camps probably by summer camp leaders, so, as such, not exactly a 'folk song'. Some of these included a repeated line about guns which as you will know, I didn't use. Here's how someone on the forum '4Real' remembers that version: 'I first learned this story as a song in Music class and then at camp. We used to sing, 'I'm going on a bear hunt. I'm not scared. Got my gun by my side.' 

Alison McMorland's version has three obstacles or venues: grass, mud and the cave - mine has six obstacles grass, river, mud, forest, snowstorm, cave. In Alison's version, the order goes 'I'm not scared' then 'What a beautiful day!'. In mine it's 'What a beautiful day!' then 'We're not scared!'. Alison's  three descriptions are 'long wavy grass' (mine same as Alison's);  'thick squelchy mud' (mine is 'thick oozy mud'); 'dark gloomy cave', mine it's 'narrow gloomy cave'.  In Alison's version all the movements through the obstacles are oral noises. Mine are onomatopoeic words which I made up. (I won't repeat them here!) 

When we get to the bear in Alison's version, it's 'two black furry ears', 'one black wet nose', 'two sharp pointy teeth'. In mine, it's 'One shiny wet nose! Two big furry ears! Two big goggly eyes!' Then in Alison's version, they dash home: through the cave, mud and grass and then shout 'Home!' In my version, they go through all the five obstacles (with words) and with the onomatapoeic words, get to the door,  go upstairs, realise they've forgotten to shut the door, downstairs, shut the door, back upstairs, into the bedroom, into bed, under the covers and there's my last line 'We're not going on a bear hunt again!' 

As you can see, there are many differences and additions. 

Early book versions of 'Bear Hunt'

Other print versions much earlier than Linda Goss's version (which people have told me about,  since I first wrote this blog) are: 'I'm Going on a Bear Hunt' by Sandra Stroner Sivulich, illus by Glen Rounds, published by Dutton in 1973, in which the obstacles are trees, rivers and caves;  'Bear Hunt' by Kathleen Savage and Margaret Stewart, illus. by Leonard Shortall, published by Prentice Hall in 1977, in which the obstacles are a river, bridge, cliff and a swamp. (Thanks to Jo Brodie on Twitter/X for providing these.) 

Note again, my version does not have trees, a bridge, a cliff or a swamp. 

Any claim that I stole/ripped off/copied Linda Goss is simply untrue. People who make this claim should be very careful as there are legal ramifications for accusing someone of plagiarism when it is clearly not true. 

I repeat: the main model I based mine on was Alison's. I built on that, changing bits, adding two obstacles, and somewhere in the process came up with an ending. (I'm not sure how that came about!)

Whose idea to make it into a book?

It wasn't my idea to make a book out of the rhyme/song. It was one that I was performing as part of my poetry show from the early 1980s onwards, largely thanks to Alison. The editor of Walker Books saw me perform my version and said it would make a great picture book. We discussed who could or should write it down. He insisted that I should. So I set about doing that. That editor's name is David Lloyd. 

How to turn a performed song or chant into a book?

The first immediate problem I had to overcome in my writing of a text that would work for a book was that at each of the 'venues', the children meet an obstacle, in my act, I produced noises, not onomatopoeic words. So I came up with onomatopoeic words, such as 'squelch squerch' and for the new obstacles (the forest and the snowstorm)  I invented: 'hoooo wooo' and 'stumble trip'. Then, again, in my oral version, I didn't have clear descriptions of all of the venues. In our book version, I kept from Alison's 'long wavy grass', but adapted or wrote descriptions: for eg  'deep cold river',  'thick oozy mud', 'big dark forest', 'swirling, whirling snowstorm', or 'narrow gloomy cave'. In other words, my oral version wasn't long enough for the fixed length of picture books. That's why I extended it.

So put these together and I came up with a) onomatopoeic words for the passage through the obstacles, b) I came up with words to describe each obstacle and c) I added two more obstacles (the snowstorm and the forest) . I made the additions and changes that I've described above for the description of the bear and the rush home, and into bed and the concluding line.

Creating the book 

As for the creation of the book, I should be clear that I had nothing to do with devising or planning the final picture of the bear walking along the beach. Indeed, I had nothing to do with how the rhyme/song is pictured. Helen Oxenbury did that entirely herself and, as I've always said, what an incredible, beautiful and wonderful job she did. I know it's hard for people to envisage how these different jobs get done in the making of picture books, but that's how it was. I produced a text, Helen did the art work, Walker Books turned it into a book. 

Retellings 

So, 'retold' is indeed an accurate description of what I did though you could also say it was 'edited' or 'adapted' or 'extended' or 'expanded' by me. It's a job I have done many times with 'traditional' and 'folkloric' material, as with retellings of the German 'Til Eulenspiegel' stories (as with my book 'The Wicked Tricks of Till Owlyglass') , a Russian story I called 'Clever Cakes', a song called 'Little Rabbit Foo Foo',  an Indian story about a Rajah's ears, the Jewish Golem of Prague stories, a set of stories called 'How the Animals got Their Colours', an edition of Aesop's Fables (Tradewind Books) and recently, a re-telling of 'Jack and the Beanstalk' (Tradewind Books). 

I have also done a book of jokes 'The Laugh Out Loud Joke Book' which is made up largely of  jokes I've collected, a song book of mostly traditional comic songs called 'Sonsense Nongs' and so on. This is part of the work that writers for children do and you can find wonderful work in this field from Michael Morpurgo, Geraldine McCaughrean and many others. 

Copyright and adaptations

In legal terms, what we do is create a new copyright version. You can find the same legality operating right the way across the world of folklore whether that be songs, stories, rhymes, jokes or whatever. 'Bear Hunt' belongs in this wider tradition of books in general where folkloric material has been adapted, retold, edited and so on. 

I am very sorry that some people might feel that somehow 'Bear Hunt' is less of a book because I adapted something rather than thought the whole thing up myself.  I always thought that the 'retold by' tag would make the situation clear. I would never want to take more credit for something that I've done than is my right or due. I'll take the credit for the adaptation, invention and editing work I did but not the concept in its totality. By the way, for the record, concepts are not copyright, only texts are. In other words, you can't copyright a story outline. Someone else can use it, adapt it, retell it. 

Another analogy for this, if you like, is when people adapt stories and novels for the stage or film.  There has never been an attempt by me to hoodwink people about what I did for the book, In fact, I've told this story about the making of the book many times in the press and in media interviews.

Who is identified with the book?

Then there's the question of who is identified with the book? In my mind, the book was 'made' by Helen and the editors at Walker Books. What I did was provide them with a text that would 'work' for what they then created. However, I have performed the text of the book on YouTube and on the publisher's website where it's been viewed just short of 30 million of times (2 vids on my son Joe's and my YouTube Channel, one on the Walker Book site). In addition, since it came out in 1989, I've performed it in schools and libraries, at book festivals and the like,  hundreds, if not thousands of times. Then when Channel Four commissioned an animation of the book, I worked with the animators (Lupus Films) on their version. I'm even on the sound track making the noise of the bear! I'm on the credits at the end as the Bear!  It follows from this involvement that I've become part of how the book is seen or known. Again, I don't want to make this into something more than it is. It is simply me performing my version of this story but doing it in many places including in several versions online and helping with the film version. 

Untrue claims, allegations and accusations

However, some people for their own reasons want to describe what I did as eg me taking a 'children's chant' and simply switching the chorus round (untrue) or me taking 'the pre-existing rhyme' and imply that I simply or only put a rhyme as I found it, into a book (untrue). That is not what I did, any more than the Brothers Grimm simply or only put 'Hansel and Gretel', 'as they found it', into a book. They adapted it, revised it, edited it, expanded it. I followed in their footsteps doing something similar, albeit for just one text. 

It's not legally correct to write on X (formerly Twitter) that I "claim authorship" of 'Bear Hunt' (see comedian and commentator Josh Howie for writing this (June 5, 2026)).  This blog is evidence that I don't "claim authorship". 

Again, someone calling themselves the 'Nine Lives of Summer' who, it seems is a writer called Jem Vanston said on X on June 7, 2026) that I get 'credited as author/creator which he isn't', but as I keep saying, it says quite clearly on the hardback and paperback editions 'retold by Michael Rosen' and I relentlessly keep telling the story on this blog, whenever I'm on TV, radio, in the press, or on social media talking about it. He has also made false claims about what royalties I receive from the book.  He has also said that I 'copied and pasted' an 'American Summer Camp Chant'.  (June 8 2026) As this blog makes clear, this is untrue. (Why are people doing this, you might ask!)

It is also neither accurate nor legally correct to say that I 'put the pre-existing rhyme in a book', as Mr Simon Myerson KC put it in a tweet (07.03.2024), nor indeed if Mr Myerson or anyone else suggests, as Mr Myerson did in a tweet on 29.08.2025,  that I had 'taken pre-existing songs and put them into a book'.  (This last phrase is ambiguous as it could possibly refer to any of my books where I edited, used or adapted songs.) 

Brigit Grant, film-maker, wrote on X (June 9 2026): 

' I thought his own bereavement would inform him but it has only done that in respect of the group that will give him the popular vote. Clever ? Clever enough to ride on the back of an existing story that he claims as his own. Check the bear hunt history for clarity . And the company he keeps shows how disingenuous he is . There are better children’s authors to follow.'

Again to be clear, I don't 'claim' that an 'existing story' is my 'own' but thanks to Ms Grant, perhaps people will 'check' this 'bear hunt history' as I've replied to her tweet on X. (And thanks, Brigit for bringing up the death of my son as part of your tweet.)

If anyone says that I took a pre-existing poem, chant or song and simply put it as I found it (or them) into the book of 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt', and they are saying this,  in order to somehow damage my reputation, then they should be advised that stating this is not a true statement of fact. I repeat, I did exactly what it says on the title page: I 'retold' the rhyme/song/story in the tradition of the Grimms, Andrew Lang and many others. I did not put a 'pre-existing rhyme' or 'pre-existing songs in a book' nor is it true to say (as a US librarian, Jennifer Gingrich,  has tweeted on X):  'Rosen's words are just a very slightly-altered version of a longtime children's chant.' Nor, as she has claimed, did I simply change round the order of the chorus. Also untrue from Ms Gingrich.

Apart from anything else, 'Bear Hunt' was never a 'children's chant' as with playground (schoolyard) rhymes and song. It was devised by a mix of summer camp leaders, and/or Scout and Brownie leaders. If a British librarian was repeatedly tweeting something like that and he or she had a large following, I know that my publishers would regard it as a serious matter.

So, in summary, and to be absolutely clear, the text of the book 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' by me, Michael Rosen, was created from the versions I knew - using some of Alison McMorland's 1977 version along with those of the Brownies) -  changing words, writing new words, inventing new sequences, and cutting words or lines that I didn't like. 

ADDENDUM 1

'Gurujuish' (who I've mentioned above) in Feb 2026 is both persisting with his old lie about me getting my version from Linda Goss but is now lying that it was lovely Helen's idea to do the book. No, it was the head of Walker Book's idea. He saw me performing it and said, 'That would make a great book.' This is how Helen herself remembers it: 

"I first heard the story when the Scottish folk singer Alison McMorland recorded a traditional song about a bear hunt and asked me to design the record cover. By coincidence, Michael Rosen and his editor knew the song, too, realised it would make a good children's story and, without knowing about my record cover, asked if I'd do the illustrations."

[source: Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/nov/05/how-we-made-bear-hunt ]

As for the Linda Goss version. I repeat: I first heard her excellent version in 2024 (35 years after our book came out.) Anyone with any sense of folk song, will be able to hear straightaway that my version is largely based on Alison McMorland's and not Linda Goss's - with its different 'obstacles', different chorus, different way of describing the obstacles and different 'way home', whereas Alison's is the version I mostly built on, expanded and adapted. Even so, there have been versions circulating from at least the 1950s, and book versions since the 1970s - as explained above. 

Gurujuish goes on and on with lies. His latest ones concern my alleged  presence in Companies House with companies in my name and that I'm doing this as some kind of tax dodge. One problem: I don't have a company so I'm not in Companies House. Just lies. 

To date (19.02.26) 'Gurujuish' has tweeted at least 24 times over the last three and half years, making up stuff about me and Bear Hunt. If he (?) was not anonymous, this would begin to look like an example of harassment. As he (?) is anonymous there is nothing at all I can do about it, apart from tell the truth and publish it, which is what I'm doing here. 

Here's his latest tweet (June 8 2026): 'Rosen: 9 companies, through which he receives generous salaries thus avoids paying taxes owed on royalties - notably for a book based on 1986 Smithsonian recording of 'Bear Hunt' by African-American storyteller Linda Goss that BBC kids' producer Rosen found filed at BrdctingHouse'

The untrue statements here are:

9 companies (I have none)

'generous salaries' (I receive none from such a source. The only salary I receive is from my one day a week at Goldsmiths University of London, which is pro rata university salary)

'avoids paying taxes' (untrue)

'royalties..for a book based on 1986 Smithsonian recording (untrue that it's based on that recording)

'BBC kids' producer found filed at Broadcasting House' (untrue I ever found that recording).

If anyone reading this knows who Gurujuish is, perhaps they could inform me.

ADDENDUM 2

Another anonymous person on X calling herself the 'Duchess of Dalston' says 'He likes people thinking he wrote 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' but that is actually a traditional a USA children's song'. (July 28 2026)

'He likes people thinking he wrote 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt'' is of course a lie, as this blog shows: I do whatever I can, and whenever I can to explain the origins and making of the book, eg talking about it on TV, on the radio, in mass media newspaper articles and of course this blog which has now been viewed 22,600 times. She goes on to say that her copy of the book doesn't say 'adapted by'. None of the editions of the book say 'adapted by'. The hardback and the paperback say 'Retold by Michael Rosen'. The paperback edition is the one that sells the most of the 14 million of so copies sold worldwide.

As for the book's origins, I explain here that there are at least two origins to the story/rhyme/chant: USA summer camp songs from the 1950s (picked up in two books published in the 1970s (see above)) and Brownies' chants from the 1950s usually involving a 'Lion Hunt'. The first full version I heard was from a Scots singer, Alison McMorland, but I had also heard some of the Brownies' versions. (All explained in detail above.)

Sad to say, the sole reason why the 'Duchess of Dalston' is telling this lie is that it's part of what she imagines is a character take-down in the service of her politics - which involves how she and I disagree over Israel. It is wonderfully absurd that 'Bear Hunt' should be dragged into the politics of Israel and people of a particular political bent have suddenly got terribly interested in the academic matter of adaptation, retelling and folklore! Perhaps they should come on the MA in Children's Literature at Goldsmiths University of London, which I co-devised and co-teach, where they could study the Brothers Grimm and other great re-tellers and adapters of folkloric material.

ADDENDUM 3

Someone calling themselves 'Zionist Zvi' replied to a tweeter on this subject, saying, 'Nah he copied it' - this was intended to mean: Rosen copied Bear Hunt. (July 28.29 2026)

Another lie from an anonymous tweeter.

ADDENDUM 4

This, perhaps, is the most bizarre of all. I was part of a three-way conversation between Alexei Sayle, Miriam Margolyes and myself, produced by Double Down News. This was announced on X in a tweet.

In response, someone with the handle 'Nine Lives of Summer' responded with this:

Then this:

Then, a bit later, this:

If you've read everything that comes before these tweets in this blog, you'll know that the first two tweets are lies. What you won't know is that the third of these three tweets is a lie too. The royalty split between Helen and me is not 50:50. Then 'Nine Lives of Summer' challenged me to reveal what the royalty split is, but of course, even if I wanted to reveal that, I couldn't, because that's private information privy to Helen.

So, I thought, just another anonymous tweeter telling lies. But then it turned out that in fact 'Nine Lives of Summer' is not a bot or a stranger to this world of books. He is an author called Jem Vanston, sometimes listed as PJ Vanston. He is a fellow member of the Society of Authors, which is a kind of writers' trade union.

Usually in trade unions there are restrictions on what one member can say about another. I asked the Society of Authors to mediate on this matter of one of their members lying about another member on the specific matter or royalties. The Society of Authors said that they do not mediate on such matters. I would have been quite happy for this matter to have been solved that way. Sadly, that's not possible. Instead, as you can see,  I've added this bit of lying to the growing list of Addenda.

Specific legal matter

I didn't want to add a specific legal matter to this blog but on account of some social media activity, I feel that I have to. I say above that people have raised objections to my version of Bear Hunt 'for their own reasons'. Very vague, on my part. For legal reasons and other reasons, I didn't say what these 'reasons' are. Let me say this then:  the line of attack that I didn't write Bear Hunt has been a supposed defence of a person I once criticised for having tweeted a manipulated form of both the book and some lines from Bear Hunt. 

To be clear: that person himself stated clearly either or both in a libel claim and in a university hearing that a) I wrote 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' and b) that the lines that he wrote were a 'parody' or a 'pastiche' or a 'corruption' of my lines from the book and that he 'echoed' a use (re-use in effect) I had once made of my own lines. This person objected to the political use I had once made of my own lines and so was parodying and echoing my political use. It's clear then, I was one of the targets of the tweet. 

In other words, if people think they are defending this person's views, by saying that I did not write Bear Hunt or that I 'stole' it from someone,  they are mistaken or not telling the truth. If people want to see screenshots of the quotes (ie 'parody', 'pastiche', 'corruption', 'echoed'), please write to me and I can provide them. 

Further information about the history of 'Bear Hunt'

***Following the publication of this blog, I received a note on Facebook today (April 8 2024) from someone (Margaret E. Sandercock) saying this: 

'I was a brownie and girl guide about 70 years ago - in those days, we sat in a circle and did the actions to ‘I’m going on a lion hunt’. I definitely remember how we all screamed ‘a lion’ when we found ‘something soft, something furry’ in the cave and how we scrabbled our way back home, panting as we arrived! ' 

This puts one origin for the song/rhyme as early as 1954, long before  Alison McMorland's and Linda Goss's versions, both of which, are great versions too. 

Here's a further refinement to the story:

Richard De St Croix

@s0apy

·

3m

Replying to

@MichaelRosenYes

The version I learnt working in an NCH family centre in Stockwell in 1981 was: (4/4 time) I'm hunting bears.. I'm not scared.. Got my gun in my pocket! Bullets, three! I walk through the short grass (etc). Did it for some friends kids in 2020 and they were totally aghast! :))

Richard De St Croix

@s0apy

·

46s

Replying to

@MichaelRosenYes

Great. We were taught it by a US summer worker - "got ma gun in ma pocket" has a great percussive hit to it in a southern accent. And the bear doesn't die of course, it's just so you don't have to be too scared. Swish, swish, swish!

A new 'find'!

Alec Muffett on Facebook has sent me a link to a text of 'Lion Hunt' (similar structure and words to versions of 'Bear Hunt') from 1955! Earliest print version so far, folks! Paste the link below into your browser and then just scroll down to find it.

The journal is called 'American Childhood, the magazine of child education in school and home'

https://archive.org/details/sim_american-childhood_1955-12_41_4/page/51/mode/1up

My poetry books for adults

 Bloody Liars (self-published)

You Are, Aren't You? (Five Leaves and Jewish Socialist Group)

Carrying the Elephant (Penguin)

This is not my Nose (Penguin)

In the Colonie (Penguin)

Selected Poems (Penguin)

The Skin of Your Back (Five Leaves)

Don't Mention the Children (Smokestack)

Listening to a Pogrom on the Radio (Smokestack)

Mr Mensh (Smokestack)

The Advantages of Nearly Dying (Smokestack)

Many Different Kinds of Love (Penguin) 

Pebbles (Smokestack)

My books about reading, poetry and writing (all mostly in a educational contexts)

 'What is a Bong Tree? Articles and talks 1976-2021' (edited by John Richmond)

'Write to Feel Right' in the Big Cat series, published by HarperCollins Educational 

'What is Poetry? The essential guide to reading and writing poems' (Walker Books) 

'Poetry and Stories for Primary and Lower Secondary Schools' (self-published, available through my website)

'Good Ideas, how to be your child's (and your own) best teacher' (published by John Murray)

'Michael Rosen's Book of Play' (published by Wellcome Books) 

'Reading for Pleasure' (self-published, available through my website)

'A Year with Poetry' (out of print but available second hand, or in the CLPE libary)

'I see a Voice' (out of print but available second hand)

'Did I Hear You Write?' (out of print but available second hand)

'I never know how poems start...' (Big Cat series - Collins)

'Why Write? Why Read?' (self-published, available through my website)

'The Author' (based on my PhD) (self-published, available through my website)

'Writing for Pleasure' (self-published, available through my website)

'Michael Rosen's Poetry Videos; how to get children writing and performing poems too' (with Jonny Walker) (self-published, available through my website)

'How to Make Children Laugh' (published by Quercus) 

'Alphabetical, how every letter tells a story' (published by John Murray)

(There's also a chapter on writing, directed at adult readers, in 'Getting Better' my book about overcoming (or trying to overcome) trauma and loss; published by Penguin) 

[Special note for the book 'Children's Literature in Action' edited by Richard Charlesworth, Deborah Friedland and Helen Jones. 

This is a book of many of the research projects by students (most of whom are teachers) on our MA in Children's Literature at Goldsmiths University of London, doing 'Children's Literature in Action' ie studying how children read. They set up research projects looking closely at children's responses to books.

It's available online, free of charge here:

https://cpb-eu-w2.wpmucdn.com/sites.gold.ac.uk/dist/a/99/files/2022/09/Childrens-Literature-in-Action-E-Book.pdf  ]

Most of these books are available here:

https://www.michaelrosen.co.uk/books/

Ofsted try to 'do' literature and end up with pap

 This comes from the new Ofsted Subject Report for English:

There's a lot here to chew over: it's the kind of report that doesn't stoop to give evidence. So with one word (the opening word),  'Occasionally...',  the need to provide evidence for the statement that follows is swept aside. It's one of those lovely, fuzzy words that can cover any complex phenomenon. Something somewhere always happens 'occasionally'. It's unassailable and so, the writers of this report hope, can't be disproved. Clever but not clever. 

'In these schools...' - this is phoney specificity. Having said 'occasionally', the authors think they're covered to say 'these schools' as if we the readers are now holders of the evidence of which schools. In fact, not. It's rhetorical hoodwinking. 

'...focus on issues of social justice or that pupils are able to access more easily.' A long time ago, someone noticed that the thing about Metaphysical poetry is that it 'yokes' together unexpected and heterogeneous images. This is a good example. The reasons why teachers might choose books that focus on issues of social justice are not necessarily anything to do with why teachers might choose books that are easy to access. In fact, I've seen teachers (and myself with my own kids) hold our noses over issues of social justice, when we've seen a child struggling to read, really taking off with a book that was easy to read but had questionable content. Mea culpa, but yoking these two elements here suggests an ideology behind the writing of this Ofsted document. It reeks of suspicion of teachers that they are funnelling literature into classrooms that is both focussed on social justice AND trashy. Again, no evidence given, but it works as a smear. 

Line 5: 'literary merit'. What is this? Of course, here it goes undefined, as if we the readers and they, Ofsted, live in a world in which we agree as much on what is literary merit as we do over accepting the law of gravity. This too is an ideological trick. The writer scoops up the reader into an assumption that we are supposed to accept without question. In fact, the concept of 'literary merit' is highly contested. We know that critics and academics are in permanent conversation about literature, and that's part of the general conversation in the 'republic of letters'. Long may it last. But trumpeting from a postion of power and privilege that there is some kind of objective gold standard of literary merit, is not part of that conversation. It's power-play. Control through privilege. I'm not even going to try to mind-read what texts the authors have in mind. What's more significant is that they think that they can bully teachers with such a term, as if they are trying to make teachers nervous that a text they have chosen for KS3 students does NOT have literary merit. Well, there's hardly a text in the world that hasn't at some time or another been chastised by someone for not having literary merit! Remember, there were purists who once had a go at Shakespeare because his iambic pentameter was irregular and ragged! One of the least satisfactory games played by some critics and academics is to joust with texts as if it's their job to find holes and weaknesses in them. I can't think of how many times I've read criticism both in national newsapers and academic journals that seek to 'prove' that a given text is not quite as 'good' as it should be, or as not so worthy of praise as others say that it is. Even so, here this phrase hangs in the air like a critical policeman's baton. 

Then comes an extraordinary sentence: 'Schools do not consider how the study of these texts might prepare pupils for further encounters with even more complex texts, as opposed to developing their understanding of issues such as homelessness.'

'Schools...' Which schools? This is an absurd generality. I read such generalities in newspapers every day, as with  what 'men', 'women', 'children' supposedly all think or do, along with use (of course) of many racialised epithets. In these examples, we call it stereotyping but in essence, it's the same process going on here. Are the authors of this document  aware of this and are using it to bully teachers or, laughably, are they not aware of it themselves? I don't know!

The proposition of the sentence holds within it an ideology around what is the purpose of the study of English in schools: it attacks the notion that we ask students to read texts that matter to them, in the here and now (an existential argument, if you like) , and proposes that we read texts at some pre-ordained idea of 'level' in order that we might proceed to a higher level in the tomorrow. It's the 'ladder' model of literary consumption: that we move from simple to hard, from naive to complex, from accessible to texts that require prior knowledge...and so on. Note here that it's the text that is supposedly developmental not the student! It's as if a text has a pre-ordained place on the ladder, and that every student should match up to that ladder's rungs. We know that most KS3 students are at a complex stage in human and psychological development. One of the fascinating and difficult things about working with students of that age is that within any one class, there will be students who appear to be miles apart in psychological, physical, emotional and social development. Slapping on to them a mythic ladder of texts and justifying why you're reading one text on the basis that it 'leads' to the next, is to deny the very circumstances of the students doing this. But then, that is indeed the ideology being recommended here, and it's been on the agenda from the very start of the Govean revolution. The student is irrelevant. Only the text and the knowledge of the text is relevant. It goes without saying, this turns the curriculum into perfect exam-fodder. An exam tests specific aptitudes in relation to a fixed, common text. It can't empathise with the conditions of the candidate. Education is constantly entangled with the thorns of this dilemma. This report is quite clear: teach the ladder. 

'...understanding of issues such as homelessness.' This is the cry of the literary purist who has spent decades being infuriated that millions of people read in order to find out about the world. They hate what they decry as 'sociological' writing and reading. Notice the deliberate selection of 'homelessness'. It's a nice piece of bathos slotted in at the end of a sentence: a deliberate attempt to contrast the heights of 'further encounters with complex texts' with 'homelessness'. The joke is that the phrase 'further encounters with complex texts' is anything but a height. It's classic bureaucratic mincemeat. When we look at it, we can see that it's probably referring to some wonderful books, plays and poems, but because this report is evidence-less pap, we are given bureaucratic banality. And then they slug us with the horror that we might read a text about a family made homeless. What? Like Joseph and Mary? 

Further travels in the land of banality come with the last sentence when we find literature is reduced to something called challenging vocabulary and structures. Quite funny, isn't it, that on the one hand the passage trumpets the undefinable, abstract 'literary merit' and on the other gives us something as dry and dull as challenging vocabulary and structures. Just to be clear, this is TV quiz game stuff: 'hard words' and 'hard sentences'. 

Now we know what these people think reading in schools should be for. We are in pursuit of the ineffable, unfindable mirage of 'literary merit'  while doing hard words and hard structures because next year, there'll be harder words and harder structures. 

Who was it who talked of 'poverty of the imagination'. I've forgotten. But there's a lot of it going on here.  

Poetry is 'memorable speech'.- [blog updated and extended]

The poet WH Auden coined or adopted the phrase 'memorable speech' to describe poetry (rather than define it). This is a rich vein to explore: 'memorable' implies both 'easy to remember' and 'worth remembering'.

There are many ways that we make poetry memorable in the sense of 'easy to remember' eg through rhythm, repetition, patterns of imagery, contrasts, ironies, figurative language that surprises us, humour, rhyme and so on.

Likewise, we have many ways to make it worth remembering: choosing subjects that matter to us, whether personal, cultural, political. Or perhaps to do with the world we go through: poetry can stop and look closely at something that might otherwise pass us by. 

In a school context, poetry offers some educational aspects that people are concerned about. Because poetry is memorable, we offer young people 'chunks' of language that becomes portable. They and we want to remember it. One of the ways in which we acquire the shape, sound and grammar of language is to remember chunks of it. Again, and related to this is the way poetry can often act as a bridge between the spoken and the written language. As Auden observed, it is a specialised form of speech. A lot of it sounds like the spoken word, and most of it can easily be spoken. And yet it isn't speech, as speech in conversation is full of hesitation, incomplete fragments, interruptions, and a method that often needs more context and human gesture to make sense. 

Another way to look at poetry is to see it as a specialised form of cohesion in language. Poetry sets up ways of making language cohesive using sound, repetition, exploration of lexical fields, contrasts, patterns of imagery and figurative language. 

This then becomes a platform for helping young people explore symbolic language. There are many ways poems use symbols or a whole poem can be taken to be symbolic or representative of something bigger than itself. A haiku about a leaf falling may be representative of something much more than a leaf falling. 

We've reached a point in education, where reading and writing poetry is something that has been quietly and silently shoved in a cupboard. Poetry in education isn't of itself or inevitably 'good'. It can be taught in a dull, tedious way especially if it's dominated by exams and the formulas needed for the exams. Poetry thrives when young people feel free to explore it and write it how they want to. This calls for poetry to be in poetry-friendly places, where poems are up on walls, where the kinds of questions we ask about poems are to do with how and what a poem might mean to you, how it reminds you of things about yourself, or other things you've read or heard, what questions you would like to ask of people in a poem or of the poet, and what the 'secret strings' in the poem that are the links between the sounds, images and lexical fields. 

It's easy to forget that poems are ways that writers start conversations. We hope that a poem will fire off conversations that readers and listeners will have in their heads and with other readers and listeners. An exam-driven curriculum is much more likely to regard poems as boxes full of a finite number of facts and the job for a student is get the right facts and a sufficient number of right facts out of the poem. It's as if the system asks of students to think of a poem as an egg-box, and the student's job is get all six eggs out. To carry on the analogy, yes, it's possible to take eggs out of a box, but eggs only really start to matter when we think of things to do with them - fry, boil, poach, use in making cakes and so on. In other words, poems only matter when we can use and adapt what we find in them. That means listening to how we use our experience of life, experience of 'texts' (in the widest sense ie including songs, films, TV programmes) to lift meaning from a poem. 'What does this poem (or line, or phrase or word) remind me of?' 'What thoughts are triggered by the poem, line, phrase or word? Why? What's the link between what's written in the poem and what I've started to think about?' 

This last is a matter of how we make links between two things - something in a poem, and something in our heads. If we can articulate what that link is, or what is in common between the two things, it may well be the first step towards abstract thoughts and ideas. The common point might be, let's say, 'disappointment' or 'regret'. One thing educators can do, is helpe students articulate and discuss such beginnings of abstract concepts that link poem (or part of poem) to student's experience.  

Books I have written which are entirely or partly about poetry: 'What is Poetry?' (

@WalkerBooksUK

)

'Write to feel Right' (Collins Big Cat) 'What is a Bong Tree? (available through my website - see 'Books'

'Poetry for Primary and Lower Secondary Schools' (available through my website - see 'Books') 

Website:

www.michaelrosen.co.uk

Letter sent to Guardian about Covid Inquiry and Herd Immunity

 

I've spent the last few days struggling with your headline and the testimony given by Mr Chris Whitty ('Herd immunity was never UK policy, Chris Whitty tells Covid inquiry' Guardian Nov 22 2023). Mr Whitty is quoted saying, “I don’t think I ever saw anybody on the record, or anybody sensible, aiming for it as a goal".

I've searched March 12 and March 13 2020, in the Guardian archive and elsewhere and I find, for example:

"Sir Patrick Vallance, England’s chief scientific adviser, has defended the government’s approach to tackling the coronavirus, saying it could have the benefit of creating “herd immunity” across the population." (March 13 2020)  

Also from March 13 2020, ITV news website: "UK's chief scientific adviser [Sir Patrick Vallance] tells ITV News he hopes Government's approach to coronavirus will create 'herd immunity'."

Again, from March 13 2020, Graham Medley from SAGE was on BBC Newsnight saying,  ‘We’re going to have to generate herd immunity…the only way of developing that in the absence of a vaccine is for the majority of the population to become infected…’

These statements seem to have been by way of explanations for Mr Johnson's comments the day before (March 12) , as reported by you "As many as 10,000 people in the UK are probably already infected with coronavirus, and many people should expect to lose loved ones, the government has said as it announced measures less stringent than those taken by other countries." And the article continued: "Britain moved from the “contain” phase of the crisis to the “delay” phase on Thursday...(March 12). The article goes on to itemise the measures NOT being taken to contain the spread of infection, such as cancelling large public events, social distancing, test-trace-and-isolate. 

These non-measures seem to me to be enactments of a herd immunity policy. 

I had great hopes that the Covid Inquiry would identify and clarify policies and approaches taken by the Government in March 2020. Instead, on this crucial matter of whether on March 12 and March 13 2020, the Government was or was not pursuing this herd immunity policy , I am less clear now than I was when I was doing my own private research. 

Even less clear now and at the time in March 2020 is what definition of herd immunity was Sir Patrick Vallance and others using. Meanwhile,  still hidden from us are what ideas were swirling round in Number 10 and the advisory committees about acceptable levels of death.  The Prime Minister's WhatsApp messages might have helped illuminate this matter, but the available technological expertise seems unable to help us here. For the time being, all we have to go on are Sir Patrick Vallance's notes of what Johnson said from October 2020 about us oldies having had a 'good innings' and our having reached our time anyway. 

I don't see how we can find out whether policies were right or wrong at the time if we can't even demonstrate what those policies were. This matter affects tens of thousands of bereaved and injured people. 

Yours 

Michael Rosen