Q&A: Michael Rosen on the need to celebrate books and reading

What is Michael Rosen Day?

A day to celebrate books and reading—and if people want to discover my books that would be great too! For the day itself, we are offering an activity pack which is suitable for a wide range of children, enabling teachers or parents/carers to create a fun and engaging celebratory moment centred around books and reading. This pack sits alongside a free-to-access virtual event, where I will be joined by MC Grammar at 10am on the day itself (there will be options to watch later!).

Why did you decide to launch Michael Rosen Day? 

It wasn’t my idea! My publisher Walker Books suggested that we should mark the anniversaries that are happening in 2024 (50 years of being published and 35 years of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt) with a day of celebration—and I am keen to support anything that means encouraging a love of books and reading! Finding space in a busy curriculum or home life for the joy and connection books can bring is just as vital as ever. 

It is being run in partnership with literary charity Read for Good. Can you tell us more about their involvement and their wider work?

Read for Good are a brilliant charity, running Readathons in schools and engaging children and wider community with books and literature. I worked with them previously in lockdown, where we ended up with 120,000 children joining me for a Sticky McStickstick event and they seemed like the perfect partner for a new virtual event celebration. They raise money year-round for fantastic programmes which deliver the magic of books and storytelling to children in hospitals across the UK.

The day will also celebrate the 50th anniversary of your first ever book, and the 35th anniversary of We’re Going On A Bear Hunt. How does it feel to have reached these milestones?

Since I was ill in 2020 I’m always amazed I’m alive, so these milestones do appear to me to be amazing and joyful. I like birthdays (mine and other people’s) so it feels like a treat.

You’ve shared a reading manifesto alongside the Michael Rosen Day announcement. What are you hoping will come from this?

That people will stop for a moment and think about all the wonderful things that come reading, and that on this day they will do what they can to get a book into a child’s hands.

You were Children’s Laureate from 2007 to 2009. How far do you think the conversation around children’s literature and literacy has come since then?

I don’t think that the mass media conversation has advanced at all. I used to present a regular programme on BBC Radio 4 devoted entirely to children’s books. While I was doing it, I enrolled for an MA in Children’s Literature at Reading University. I thought I would upskill myself and raise the level of public conversation we have about books. However, the moment I did that, the programme got cancelled. It’s very hard to take the conversation about children’s books much beyond gossip and a kind of GCSE enthusiasm. Aside from that, I’m afraid to say that the school curriculum has become so packed and so prescriptive that it is very hard to make schools places where books can be enjoyed and talked about on their own merit. They have to be put into the knowledge machine and read so that they can the school students’ responses can be measured, assessed and graded.

Luckily, there are people, like Teresa Cremin at the Open University, who are working incredibly hard to push back against this trend and take us back to the place where educators knew that reading books and talking about them is an education in itself. What’s more, there are all the book charities and agencies like BookTrust, the Reading Agency, the Literacy Trust, the Federation of Children’s Book Groups, the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education, Beanstalk, children’s book festivals like Bath, Cheltenham, Edinburgh and the many children’s book websites working day and night to build up expertise in children’s books, reading and understanding and, most importantly of all, getting books into children’s hands. These are all places and reasons to be hopeful about the world of children’s books and children’s reading. 

For more information, resources and a sign-up link for the Michael Rosen Day live event, visit Michael Rosen’s website.