Farewell Michael Rosen, hello Anthony Browne
The sixth UK Children’s Laureate has been named and it’s none other than Anthony Browne. The man who has brought us Willy the Wimp, unforgettable gorillas, Piggybook and surreal takes on fairytales will be an outstanding ambassador for books and reading. Lucky UK children. Here is some of the new Laureate’s work.
Despite the superb job he has done, previous Laureate Michael Rosen knows there is a long way to go. He reflects on the past two years – there are still plenty of brick walls to dismantle:
I am sitting in a room in the House of Commons with Ed Balls and Jim Knight. To my left are several people who haven’t been introduced, who are probably from “the department”. We are talking about books. I say to the ministers that they’ve put in place a compulsory programme to teach children how to read, but there is no policy on reading books. They look at me blankly… I say that what’s going on is discriminatory. Children who come from homes where books are being read get access to the kinds of abstract and complex ideas that you can only get hold of easily through exposure to extended prose. The rest are being fed worksheets.
Ed doesn’t believe me. He tells me that he visited a school where they had a library in the playground. I tell them that I’ve been making a film for BBC4 about a school that wanted me to help them become what I call a book-loving school. Their school library is a couple of alcoves of old books. They have no contact with the public library down the road. Only a handful of children in the school are reading books. Jim seems interested. “What do you want from us?” he says. “A directive asking every local authority and every school to devise its own policy on the reading of books. I’ve got a 20-point outline that you could send out as a guideline for people to adapt.” “Send it to me,” says Jim. “I have already,” I say. “Send it to me again,” he says, “and let’s meet up after the programme goes out.”
