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Michael Rosen biography

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Michael Rosen

Michael Rosen

Michael Rosen Biography

Michael Rosen is a former Children's Laureate and the bestselling author of We're Going on a Bear Hunt (which won the Smarties Best Book of the Year Award) and many other books. He has also presented Word of Mouth on BBC Radio 4 since 1998. He has a Phd in Education, been awarded five extra honorary doctorates by various universities and made Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of Arts and Literature) by the French government. In 2013 he became Professor of Education Studies at Goldsmiths.

Michael Rosen's website

This bio was last updated on 01/27/2015. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

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Interview

Michael Rosen muses on the mysteries of the alphabet, a topic he explores in Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story

As daily viewers of films, we regularly accept something odd: the focus pull. We look at a scene in which, say, there is some blurry stuff on one side of the screen while in the distance someone is going about their business. Then, for no immediate apparent reason, the blurry stuff stops being blurry and we suddenly start to see someone or something who has some kind of relation to that first figure. Without the use of lenses, we're able to do something similar with the alphabet. For much of the time, particularly when we're reading, the alphabet is out of focus. Unlike the blurry film, though, it is more as if we both look with it and through it at the same time!

So, when we're learning to read, we learn any or all of these: the names of letters, the sounds of letters, the sounds of combinations of letters and we learn how in English, the match between letters and sounds is not 100% regular. Sometimes letters can denote different sounds: the 'ch' in 'machine' asks us to make a different sound from the 'ch' in 'chapter'. Sometimes a given sound can be denoted in different ways: in most dialects of English 'crow' rhymes with 'though', 'so', 'sew', 'beau' or 'oh'. Yet, we would never be able to read for the purpose of ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Michael Rosen at BookBrowse
Alphabetical jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Michael Rosen but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Melvyn Bragg

    Melvyn Bragg

    Melvyn Bragg was born in 1939 in Wigton, Cumbria - where many of his books are set. He won a scholarship to Oxford to read history, and in 1961 he gained a coveted traineeship with the BBC.

    He presented Start the Week ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Alphabetical

    Try:
    The Adventure of English
    by Melvyn Bragg

  • David Crystal

    David Crystal

    David works from his home in Holyhead, North Wales, as a writer, editor, lecturer, and broadcaster. Born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland in 1941, he spent his early years in Holyhead. His family moved to Liverpool in 1951, and ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Alphabetical

    Try:
    Spell It Out
    by David Crystal

We recommend 9 similar authors

View all 9 Read-Alikes

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