Peas On Your Knees
Michael Rosen, illustrated by Quentin Blake, Polly Dunbar, Bob Graham, Yasmeen Ismail, Ken Wilson-Max
Walker Books

This collection of nearly forty poems span some forty years and is published to coincide with and celebrate Michael Rosen’s 80th birthday. It begins with a tribute by Joseph Coelho and as he says, “… you can feel Michael’s effervescent energy bubbling off the page. His poems are invitations to the child reader to walk with him as an equal … They are playful and rhythmic, fizzing with repetition, (No Breathing in Class) and buzzing with percussion (The Michael Rosen Rap).”

It’s divided into five parts – Food, Childhood, School, Brothers and Being a Dad and Being Silly, each section being superbly brought to life by a different artist, the first being Ken Wilson-Max, the second Polly Dunbar, the third Bob Graham, the fourth Yasmeen Ismail and the final one Quentin Blake.

Many readers will be familiar with the old favourite, Hot Food and even if you haven’t met Chocolate Cake previously, the narrator’s consumption of the cake will definitely strike a chord.

If satire is your thing, then No Breathing In Class is for you: it tells of a teacher ‘who was so strict / you weren’t allowed to breathe in her lessons. / She used to stand out the front going, / “No breathing!” / and you had the whole morning to get through … The weak ones used to just keel over. / You’d hear them going down behind you: / Kapoom kapoom kaoom!’

I never taught a primary class who didn’t respond positively to Michael’s poems, many of the children loved to join in with some of them and lots invented their own versions of Down Behind the Dustbin.

This really is the most terrific selection for reading aloud, learning some of the offerings by heart and for adding to bookshelves at home, in classrooms, libraries, hospitals and anywhere else you can think of. It would also make a splendid present.