Michael Rosen

“The way we speak is very different from the way we write - especially from the way we write continuous prose.”

“Poetry on TV doesn't have to be like a newscast with someone staring blankly at the camera, pretending they're not reading from an autocue.”

“I've seen after-school clubs where parents, teachers and children have got together to write books. They were in a mix of languages; the books told stories of what the parents got up to when they were children and how they arrived in the area, whether it was from another country or from the other side of town.”

“If you find yourself caring about old stories and regret the ways in which they slip out of reach of young audiences, you may well conjure up the means to put these tales into young peoples imaginations.”

“One of the reasons we invented continuous prose was to lay out an argument, piling points on top of each other, weighing one view against another, even to invite the reader to look back at something earlier or later in a book.”

“There should be room in education for schooling to be more responsive to events, more focused on varying interpretations and more able to create artistic and technological responses to the world as it changes.”

“The whole of Sheffield seems to be crazy about books. There are festivals and their own book awards, and their own children's book conferences for teachers and librarians.”

“This is me being sad.Maybe you think I'm being happy in this picture. Really I'm being sad but pretending I'm being happy. I'm doing that because I think people won't like me if I look sad.”

“A society based on a market economy which decided that people should only be allowed to take up senior positions in business, administration and the professions purely on merit would have to abolish the main mechanisms for taking up the top positions in society: inherited wealth, tax havens and private education.”

“On the rare occasions that men talk to each other about these things, we discover that step-fathering a child whose father has died is very different again from the experience of trying to do it with a child whose father is alive but not on the scene, and that is different from the situation where the biological father is around sometimes.”

“You pass a poem to the audience through the words as embodied literally by the rest of your human form. And the people listening and watching come back at you in an equally embodied way.”

“We need all people, everyone, to think for themselves, to think critically, to think abstractly, to develop their powers of empathy.”

“Whether were parents, carers, teachers or anyone working with young children, we know that children move easily and often between free play and structured play. One is not better or worse than another, they each offer different experiences, different ways of thinking, and different kinds of learning.”

“When territories were settled or invaded by force, the colonisers frequently used names of European monarchs, leaders and the military as part of their settlement. The number of Victorias all over the world are one testimony to that.”

“Reading for pleasure can easily sound like some kind of wishy-washy, soft option, while instructional stuff like learning-to-read through 'synthetic phonics' and endless worksheets requiring children to answer questions about the facts in short passages, sounds tough and purposeful.”

“Politicians of all kinds think there's some running in talking tough about children's reading. They think that if they announce to the public that some kind of daily drilling on sounds and letters is to be brought in, the problem of children's reading will be solved.”

“The main problem with people not reading to their children is the lack of a bridge between schools and families, so that children don't see books and learning as a separate part of life.”

“Only when all children are in a book-loving environment will they achieve literacy, yes, but a lot more: a confidence in handling abstract ideas, an understanding of a multiplicity of viewpoint and the complexity and diversity of human interaction that comes through reading widely and often.”

“I love rereading Shakespeare plays and Im constantly finding bits that Ive overlooked or not understood before.”

“The word 'family' has always posed great difficulties. Until recently, high death rates for women in labour meant many stepmothers and, according to folklore, most of them wicked. After two world wars, we lost many fathers, and single- and step-parenting emerged from the rubble.”