I have long loved Michael Rosen's work, and upon spotting this book knew I had to read it. This is a wonderful collection of poetry that chronicles some of his own family history, and explores the some of the journeys that migrants take today.

I was very excited to get this book as I love Michael Rosen and Quentin Blake and also because I knew it would fit well with other books we read at school.

As expected, the poems and the illustrations are beautiful. There are poems that force you to imagine yourself in unimaginable situations, where I got to the end and realised I'd been holding my breath (Cousin Michael), others that question the Englishness of English literature and the logic of people who want to move to another country because this one is "full of foreigners" and some that share stories of Michael's family. There were names that I recognised from his recent (also brilliant) book, The Missing.

This is an incredible collection of poems that truly will make you laugh, cry, hope and despair. It is not a book to be missed.

An poignant and powerful collection to spark empathy in children. Definitely one I'll be sharing with my students.

Another thought provoking title from The Sage: Michael Rosen. This is a considered collection of poems which start with some intensely personal experiences and develop into an outward looking aspect of the world that we live in now. This collection would be enjoyed by all ages and should inspire wonderful conversations. I can imagine that it could be paired beautifully with history lessons about World War Two, literacy lessons with novels set during the war, or even with modern stories like 'The Boy at the Back of the Classroom'.

Rosen shows the intimacy of family history and hidden culture in poems like 'Don't Tell Your Mother,' which made me smile at the shared conspiracy within a household that is clearly trying to fit in, but also wanting to enjoy small moments that make the occupants who they are. The untold sadness and truth in 'Country' and how in war 'they forget how to count'. The poem 'English Literature' makes a statement on the current state of the English Curriculum and diversity.

This is a collection of poems that every household should own. I can't wait to get my copy.

On the Move: Poems About Migration is another real treat from the inimitable Michael Rosen on National Poetry Day, with Quentin Blake’s unmistakable illustrations to complement the text beautifully. At a time when the future is looking increasingly uncertain, this important and topical collection explores the ideas of migration, displacement, war, discrimination and refugees, in languid, stunning prose which is accessible to younger children right through to the young at heart. It's a moving, inspirational read and its central message reminds us to treat other humans with kindness as we may never know when it may be necessary to count on the kindness of strangers ourselves. It was a joy to curl up under a blanket on a cool autumn evening to enjoy the feast for the senses both poet and illustrator have crafted. It would also make a perfect gift. I cannot recommend this highly enough. Many thanks to Walker Books for an ARC.

This week on the National Poetry Day (1/10), Michael Rosen, once more, will gift the world with his amazing poetry with the publication of ‘On the move poems about migration’. This is a very important book that has arrived at a moment in history where we stand at the edge of ‘it can happen again’ - the horrors of the past. And right now, it is happening again. Through his poems Michael Rosen connects you with the history of his family and migration, helping the children to understand and connect with their own history. The poems are very personal, they are sincere, they make a link directly with your heart and your ‘humanity’. His poetry gives the children the opportunity to claim their right of being ‘citizens of the world’ and to be free to see that ‘Home is where you find it.’ Quentin Blake, with all his expertise and talent complements this gem beautifully with his pictures. Highly recommended!

This is a moving book of poems and illustrations on the subject of migration. Michael Rosen has given my the privilege of sharing his personal, experiences and those of his family and fiends of migration, war and separation. It is an important testament and reminder that many of us have migration within our family history. If we value the term global citizens we have a responsibility to reach out to each other. I will share many ideas with Upper Key Stage 2 children but especially Today and On The Move Again and am excited to share the beautiful illustrations to gain their perspective and inferences..

Thank you Michael Rosen and Quentin Blake. for this beautiful book. Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity of an ARC.

Michael Rosen is national treasure who has not only encouraged children to further their love of reading but to think & appreciate the world around them. This latest collection is split into powerful themes that flow effortlessly into one and another like the waves in an ocean. Your heart will shatter with the honesty in the poems and the injustices in the world in the past and the present. But there is the hope that future generations can make the difference.

The one poem that affected me the most was Never Again, it has stayed with me days after I read the book and I have gone back to it time and time again.

The partnership of Rosen & Blake is always going to be something to treasure, they are master craftsmen in their fields, they work so well together. Blake’s illustrations are exquisite and echo Rosen’s words perfectly.

4.5 stars
This was a stunning book of poetry with illustrations that hit at the heart. I was also a compelling story read as the whole, steeped in history, migration, war and prejudice. It is aimed at 9-12 year olds but like all the best Pixar and Disney animations, it has a level that speaks to the adult and I’m emotional just writing this review; it touched me deeply.

You can’t speak of it.
It is the unspeakable.
You can’t say it.
It is the unsayable.
You can’t say what you know.
It is the unknowable.

Rosen navigated his family’s story, from his eyes and stories he’d heard. The themes are sometimes potentially distressing but have much to say about the past and today.

This isn’t one of Rosen/Blake’s upbeat but it is still wonderful like his Sad Book and it will open up these experiences to many readers, young and older.

Thank you to Walker Books for the early review copy.

Cold waves suck up the pebbles on an empty beach and somewhere, somewhere near, a child's cry pierces the roar of the boiling waves for a moment, just a moment, then only the harsh complaint of the swooping gulls. This happened today, it happened yesterday, it will happen tomorrow. Somewhere in our past, we all have a memory of such a journey, there can be no guarantee that we will escape a similar journey in the future. Bombs are always falling, why not here? Plagues burn across the planet, why not here? Dictators seize power and citizens denounce their neighbours, why not here? Those waves of people seeking security, seeking opportunity, yesterday, everyday, where are they now? In a short breath of time they are your neighbour, your friend, your doctor, your teacher, the cleaner in your hospital. In time a newer group of displaced people are the ones to be feared and distrusted. Yet years after settling into a new home each bears the memory of a life unlived, a future that could have been theirs, in a sun soaked Damascus or a snowy Polish village, friends, family and children unborn that will never be. As Michael Rosen describes when he imagines a man endlessly swimming across a lake in a land he had never seen. Each new settler brings their own culture, their own music, poetry and foods and enrich a country, if that country is secure in its own identity.

"What you leave behind Won't leave your mind. But home is where you find it. Home is where you find it."

This collection of poems from Michael Rosen examines migration with unflinching honesty and powerful anger, but also with warmth and engaging nostalgia. Sir Quentin Blake's illustrations depict friendless families, hand in hand, old and young, moving, always on the move, across bleak expanses of landscape, far from home. The poems are divided into four sections. The first deals with his own memories of childhood in a Polish family in London. The second deals with his memories of growing up during the War. The third with the uncles and cousins who escaped the Holocaust and the "missing", dragged away from their homes to end their lives in the Death Camps. The fourth looks at global issues of migration.

The poems speak the names of the "missing" and the banished, seek to rebuild the lost villages, breathing life into those whose memory they tried to erase. Also, I think, to celebrate the lives of our parents and grandparents, before those that remember them, remember them no more, and what more evocative reminder than food, those illicit Matzo Brei, a secret, never to be told. And, I remember my own grandparents, coal merchants who escaped the rise of smokeless fuels to live their last days in rural north Oxfordshire. Time had washed them up so many years away from the glory of their youth, his team of Shire horses, her pink wedding dress. Their larder with its pig's head, soon to be braun, tripe soaking in milk, gelatinous ox tail ready to be sucked, crabs and potted pastes and always bread and butter. Outside a huge pig, which my grandfather was too kind-hearted to kill and this giant landrace slept away its days in the middle of the Oxford road. Soon I will the only one left to tell their story and recall the day the bombs fell in their street, smashing every window in the house.

The whole is a plea for compassion, a call for action, and a reminder of our common humanity. How easy is it to demonise a stranger. In troubled times how convenient to make political capital from the anguish of those that arrive from abroad, to point at them and focus our anger. How difficult to see their plight as ours, best to remember we were all migrants once, all seeking shelter from the storm and:

“You can only do something now.”

Even long after I heard these poems they still echo and return to haunt the memory as, I think, only poetry can. I was surprised by their lyricism and particularly moved by the stories of the disappeared, this book will stand as their memorial and it should serve as a sharp reminder that this almost casual brutality haunts our history and threatens our future.

Guy Thornton

Even if the cry for justice is ages old:

You’ll put down strangers,
Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,
And lead the majesty of law in lyam
To slip him like a hound; alas, alas, say now the King,
As he is clement if th’offender mourn,
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you: whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbour? Go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, Spain or Portugal,
Nay, anywhere that not adheres to England,
Why, you must needs be strangers, would you be pleas’d
To find a nation of such barbarous temper
That breaking out in hideous violence
Would not afford you an abode on earth.
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you, not that the elements
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But charter’d unto them? What would you think
To be us’d thus? This is the strangers’ case
And this your mountainish inhumanity.

William Shakespeare in 'The Book of Thomas More'

A truly incredible collection of Michael Rosen’s poetry focusing on the themes of migration, refugees and displacement. This compendium includes works that explore the horrors inflicted upon Michael Rosen’s own family and the Jews in world war 2 but also extend to all intervening years of the human struggle to escape torture , control and war. Quentin Blake’ s haunting illustrations add another depth. Every poem delivers a beauty and a punch to the conscience in relation to where we are now and how we have or haven’t learned from the past. This is a book for everyone and highly recommended to use with upper key stage 2 and secondary school learners- it is with the young we can sew those seeds that dare them to question and challenge the control of authority and oppression and learn from the tragedies of lives lost and displaced in the past and the present . Each poem will stay with you beyond reading ... “Cousin Michael “ has a powerful impact. A collection to share and return to so we never forget. I will be recommending this to colleagues and learners in education .

Michael Rosen is one of my heros - I’ve read his books to my own children and to children at schools where I’ve taught. I listened to stories of his battle with Covid and his poetry tribute to the NHS. I hadn’t finished the introduction of this collection before I was crying as Rosen unpicks the difference between a ‘migrant’ and a ‘refugee’ and talks of a world without borders, for everyone. This collection is about people on the move, not through their own volition but as a result of war and persecution; what that human movement looks like and its impact on future generations. This is poetry that flows from heart to pen, not harnessed to rhyme or structure. There are poems about prejudice, families travelling to concentration camps, living in another land, sailing across unfriendly seas, of not drowning. Poetry has such a direct and concise way of conveying a story. Quentin Blake’s illustrations are powerful, extending the story in simple pictures using blacks, blues and greys. I shed tears from start to finish, for Oscar and Rachel who were so close, for what these poems say about our humanity, for those families trying not to drown. This collection is for everyone to read, enjoy but mostly understand. It is a gift for teachers - a tool for class discussion about identity and humanity, for history lessons, and a stimulus for creative writing. There’s a wealth of additional resources listed at the back. This would make a powerful visual exhibition or theatre production. With thanks Netgalley and Walker Books for a digital copy of this book.

Oh my gosh my heart. This collection of poems has be sobbing. I loved My Friend Roger, which broke my heart, English Literature, which made me think and Don’t Drown that made me cry. A beautiful collection, Michael Rosen is an amazing poet and Quentin Blake’s illustrations are, as always, perfect.