...to dislike Michael Rosen's poetry?

[Nemo1986]

I mean, I just.... don't think it's very good. Clearly he has massive appeal, but I just. don't. get. it.

Anyone else?

He's very hit and miss. One of my sons loves his poems, the other hates them. Mind you, DS2 loves Spike Milligan and Roger McGough like me, which is probably why he finds Michael Rosen a bit boring.

Louis Walsh would tell him he "made it his own":

www.theguardian.com/books/2012/nov/05/how-we-made-bear-hunt

It does bug me that it's totally credited to him!

I love Michael Rosen, probably because my 9 year old thinks he's awesome.

In yr4 they performed some of his poems at a local festival, No Breathing In Class was brilliant.

If you are forced to read some Pie Corbett, Michael Rosen seems quite good.

Saucery :o

Pie Corbett seems to write poetry just so people think he's allowed to tell us how to teach children to write in a hideous tick box style

whispers

Am I the only one who thinks "On the Ning Nang Nong" is the best poem ever written? Spike Milligan is amazing.

I find male, pale and stale writers attempting to rap an absolute hoot.

I do think it's ridiculous and plagiaristic that he would claim authorship of both Bear Hunt and Little Rabbit Foo Foo. He is not the creator of either. That's arrogant and unethical enough to put me off everything else he's done.

BowieFan it is a wonderful poem. As are most of Miligan's.

Lots of children's authors do that, use old folk stories, etc and bring them into their own style. Julia Donaldson's Squash and a Squeeze is an old story retold, still a great book though.

What about Seamus Heaney's Beowulf? Is that plagiarism too?

We have a poem a day policy in my class. In the top 5 are Rosen, Zephaniah, Mcgough, Milligan and Patten. Not all of them are to my taste but the sheer joy of watching kids, even boys, choose a poem on "their" day always makes me happy. We like Rosens "Washing up" best. Youtube is brilliant for poems.

I'm just happy we can listen to Zephaniah's "Talking Turkey" soon.

The Highway Rat (Donaldson) is a complete lift of The Highwayman. It also explains the bizarre rhythm.

I am not in love with Bear Hunt at all. I sang it as a child and the version we sang then (I think originally a US camp song?) scanned with much better rhythm, so I always find the Rosen one annoying.

I love his politics though and his delivery - great as a performance poet.

Bowie We love Ning nang nong. We nearly have it memorised, it's so much fun. My boys, 4 & 7 can also recite I saw a tiger trailing me. The 4 yr old completely re-wrote it as a poo tree instead of banana tree. So proud
We like Bear hunt, but the follow up books (bear in the city) are very weak. DS1 likes chocolate cake, I refuse to read it, it's awful and I don't present food as treats/good/bad yes I'm odd. We've got one of his poetry books and I've lost it since we got it for the moment. DS1 likes lots of styles of poems, Rosen is the only one I refuse.

arse do you mean the one titled Beowulf: A New Verse Translation? Nope, not plagiarism :) Both Bear Hunt and Foo Foo are so well known by generations of American kids - everyone learns them at camp or in the schoolyard... It just seems very off to release them as books in a different country where they're less universally well known, credited as the author as if you came up with them .

I really, really struggle to get past Bear Hunt.

But I do enjoy Word of Mouth which he presents on R4 - fascinating.

Cherrycoke That explains how I knew Bear hunt yet it wasn't published until I was well into adulthood, I was very confused. No, not on to publish others work as your own.

Garbage. Absolute garbage.

Masketti: what is garbage, my post or the poetry? ;-)

Little Rabbit Foo Foo is rubbish. I didnt realise it was anything to do with Rosen. I remember someone told me it was her favourite story to read to children once. I was surprised. I thought it was a bargain basement type of book. However, whats not to like about Bear Hunt??

Michael Rosen blocked me on twitter. Just because I didn't quite agree with something he said on exams. I wasn't even horrible. Just disagreed with him. That changed my opinion of him - even thought I like his radio programme and do agree with much of what he says.

So I'm now blocked by him and Katie Hopkins

When my DDs were around 8 or 9 they loved the poems he wrote about his son Eddie as a toddler. I was very sad when I came across Michael Rosen's Sad Book and found out that Eddie hadn't made it to adulthood.

I played several times this week - a fantastic, powerful commemoration of the Battle of Cable Street.

We just saw him in cheltenham and he was utterly brilliant. Think you really have to watch him perform the poems.

I'm not particularly keen on most of his stuff, but The Sad Book is wonderful. I haven't been able read it since I had kids.