Michael Rosen’s NICE! Poems
Michael Rosen, illustrated by Hannah Robinson
Walker Books

You can’t go wrong with a poetry book by Michael Rosen: this one is a new edition of a collection then named The Hypnotiser, I read to pieces in my classroom back in the late 1980s. Now it has a different illustrator whose line drawings are suitably hilarious. Here’s the one for a favourite of mine, The Car Trip that recounts the kind of journey many parents who have driven a car with fidgety children in the back seat will know all too well.

Young listeners will love Fast Food wherein a hamburger decides it’s not going to be eaten and starts a chase down the street following in the footsteps of the Gingerbread Man. Imagine your class full of six year olds all chanting, the repeat refrain “Eating me is cruel; / eating me is murder. / You can’t catch me / I’m the speedy hamburger.” at the top of their voices.

Also on the topic of food (indeed there are several poems about food) is Hot Food, so much fun that it has earned itself a solo picture book edition – Hot Food: Nice! and has become a meme in China and the USA. This one like many others you can catch Michael reciting on You Tube.

Much briefer and not actually having food related words in the title is My Mum:
‘My mum said to me and my brother; / “Don’t crumble your bread or roll in the soup.” / I said: / “I don’t want to roll in my soup.” // Then she said: “Eat up Michael.” / And my brother said: / “I don’t want to eat up Michael.”

Although the majority of poems herein are humorous there are some more serious including Deep Down about a sad place inside. I suspect we all have one of those that we visit from time to time.

It would be easy to go on enthusing about this book but instead I will finish by saying, just buy a copy; you won’t regret it.