Author Michael Rosen has been writing books for children for the best part of four decades, from classics such as We’re Going On A Bear Hunt and Quick, Let’s Get Out of Here to You Can’t Catch Me! and Mustard, Custard, Grumble Belly and Gravy. He also served as Children’s Laureate from 2007 until 2009.

He spoke to Tes about his memories of his own school days and the teachers he recalls best, and about why he’s written a new book that chronicles his recovery from illness with a walking stick with the eye-catching title, Michael Rosen’s Sticky McStickstick: the friend who helped me walk again.

1. Where did you go to primary school?

I went to Tyneholme Nursery School in Wealdstone and then I went to Pinner Wood School, from the age of about 4 till 7.

And then because we were the [baby boom after the Second World War], they opened up more schools where I lived in Pinner and so I was a founder pupil of a school called West Lodge County Primary School.

I not only remember them well, I actually write about them quite a lot - all sorts of scenes from my primary school times turn up in my books, so I remember all that very well. I can even remember that nursery school very well.

2. Do you have any specific memories from your nursery school?

A big puzzle for my parents was every day when I got home I’d say to them, “Gallacker’s got a big gas stove,” which seems like a quite an odd thing for a child [to say], and they couldn’t get out of me what this meant.

My mum went into the nursery after a few days and said to Miss Hornby - who I can remember very well and I called “Hornby teacher” - “Michael says ,‘Gallacker’s got a big gas stove’.” Hornby teacher said, “Come this way,” and took my mum to the kitchen, and there Mum met Mrs Gillick. And there was indeed a giant gas stove which did all the cooking.

Obviously this was the thing that impressed me the most at nursery - not all of the wonderful games and toys or the sandpit, but “Gallacker’s got a big gas stove”.

3. Are there teachers from your primary school whom you remember well?

At Pinner Wood, the headteacher was Miss Stafford and she was a great believer in Bible stories. She had a blackboard and coloured chalks, and she would pace up and down in front of the school and tell the story of Joseph and his coat or Moses and the promised land, and she drew them on the board as she spoke.

On one occasion, she was busy drawing and then she turned around and said, “Michael! What’s the matter with you? Have you got ants in your pants?” and the whole school burst out laughing and I remember from then on I had this phrase “ants in your pants” in my head.

And you’ll be pleased to know it made its way into a poem of mine - Don’t Put Mustard in the Custard - because one of the lines is “Don’t put ants in your pants”, which children of course find funny to this day.

4. What was it like when you moved to the next primary school?

They opened up West Lodge School in 1954 when I was 7, possibly just going on 8, and I was a founder pupil in what was then second-year juniors.

I had Miss Goodall for two years and I can remember very well we were in classes of 48 children in rows. I can remember all sorts of things with Miss Goodall [but] one of my favourite memories of her is her reading Emil and the Detectives [by Erich Kästner], which is a lovely, lovely book and which remains my favourite to this day.

5. All the teachers you’ve mentioned so far are women - was that because of the Second World War, do you think?

Yes, it’s a good observation. I can only remember one male teacher at that first primary school, none at the nursery, and in the second, I can only see two in my mind: Mr Baggs, who took us for football, and Mr Barnes, who took us for music. All the rest are women.

6. Have you been back to visit any of these schools?

Yes, I go back to both these [primary] schools. They ask me back; I go back to foundation days and other things. I did a Zoom call back to my old primary school just after I was ill and I’m always fascinated by looking at the playground and the field and the school hall and seeing what’s the same and what’s different.

7. And what about at secondary school - are there memorable teachers there?

I went to two grammar schools: Harrow Weald County Grammar School and Watford Grammar School for Boys. I suppose most of my favourite teachers taught me English - there was Barry Brown, who was a breath of fresh air in that school because he basically wanted to be an actor.

In fact, much later, he went on to be run an actors’ agency and when he died, someone knew that I had known him at school, and I helped write his obituary for The Times, because he was quite well known. He had some quite good actors on his books.

But as a teacher, he used to sit with his feet up on the desk, and we’d read, say, Shakespeare, and he’d be holding the book up in the air, waving to us. “OK, Rosen, you read Bottom. You’re a donkey by now.”

8. And did any of them influence or inspire your interest in writing?

Yeah. I had an English teacher called Mrs Turnbull, who came from Northern Ireland, and she would say, “Michael, you’re going to be a writer.” And she said this to me in almost every essay or composition that I turned in - she’d either put it on the bottom or she’d say it to me face to face: “You’re going to be a writer.”

I thought she might have been soft-soaping me but I put her in the book of reasons of partly why I became a writer,[so] it was a lovely thing for her to say.

9. You’ve written a new book with a wonderful title - what’s it all about?

Last year, I got Covid and it got very serious and they put me into a coma for 40 days, and then I had some time recovering and then they sent me to a rehabilitation hospital because I couldn’t stand up and I couldn’t walk.

[But] I made friends with my NHS [walking] stick, and basically learned how to walk with it. And I remember tweeting about it and people finding it very funny that I called the stick Sticky McStickstick - somewhere from my mind thinking about Boaty McBoatface, I suppose. People tweeted and said how lovely it was that I’d come around - or come back from the land of the dead, as I put it - and I thought, well, this is a nice story to tell.

10. What do you hope people will take from the book?

It’s a bit like my book Michael Rosen’s Sad Book, in that it’s for any age of person to think about how we are.

So, here is an older person - me - and they’ve got ill, and they’re struggling to make an improvement. On the one hand, it might speak to the child as a child who’s been ill, but on the other hand, maybe they are with people like their parents, grandparents, great uncles, aunts and they can see the kinds of struggle that maybe Granddad [goes through when he] goes to hospital or Grandma goes to hospital, or they say, “Oh, my back hurts and I can’t come to the park with you.”

And I can’t think of many other books that show people helping themselves with sticks. I don’t mean you don’t see people with a stick, but that [you don’t see many books that are] actually about having a stick or a wheelchair as part of a process and a part of living.

Michael Rosen’s book Sticky McStickstick: the friend who helped me walk again is out on 4 November, published by Walker. Michael Rosen is also taking part in EmpathyLab’s “Empathy check-in month” in November. A video from Michael and other resources are available for schools as part of the event - more information can be found at www.empathylab.uk. Michael Rosen was talking to Dan Worth, senior editor at Tes

This article originally appeared in the 29 October 2021 issue