Celebrated children’s author, broadcaster and academic Michael Rosen visited Jersey to take part in the Jersey Festival of Words.
He spoke at the Freedom Centre, telling stories and reciting poetry from his life.
Earlier in the day, he stopped in Millenium Park where he was shown the “story trail”, which is currently featuring his book, Oh Dear, Look What I Got!
“I think it’s absolutely wonderful!” he said. “It’s beautifully, beautifully presented and enacted. It’s just perfect in every way.”
He was given a tour of the trail by Cris Lakeman, CEO of Every Child Our Future, which started the initiative two years ago.
The trail features pages of a popular children’s book – changing every three weeks – along a path in the park, allowing children to encounter literature in a discovery-led way.
Mr Rosen said the concept was “freer” than going to a library and offers a different way to access literature.
“You can run round the book and physically it’s a different experience. Or you could just stare at one picture and maybe not do the whole trail, and that would be fine as well,” he said.
Ms Lakeman joked that it was a “relief” Mr Rosen liked it.
The author of more than 200 books, Michael Rosen is one of the most celebrated children’s authors writing in English today. From classics like Going on a Bear Hunt and his Chocolate Cake poem to his Sad Book about the loss of his son, who was only 18, Mr Rosen has been at the forefront of children’s literature for as long as most of us can remember.
A recent study of primary and secondary school children in Jersey found that they had a “high degree of ambivalence” towards reading.
Mr Rosen said that new, innovative approaches to exposing children to literature were needed, adding that a “story trail” in his local park would be “perfect”.
He said: “We forget how small the children’s world is. If you’re a three-year-old, going round the corner is like the equivalent of us getting on a plane and going to America. It’s that excitement at something they haven’t seen, which is lovely. You’ve got that potential here.”
The importance of reading, Mr Rosen said, is because it is “slow”. “I’m part of it [the world], I’m in it, and at the same time, I scratch my head and go, “what happened today then?
“There’s something both intimate and slow about books, and while ‘slow’ sounds trivial, if you absorb things slowly – reading in other words – it’s a different kind of way that your mind is working. You’re more reflective.
“It gives the child time to think about how they relate to the things in the book, how the book relates to them, and there’s time to think about it.”
