On the Move: Home Is Where You Find It

by Michael Rosen, Quentin Blake (Illustrator)

Overview

In a masterful new collaboration, personal poems and poignant art illuminate the experience of refugees and immigrants everywhere.

That’s why
it can happen again.
It does happen again.
It has happened again.

Some of Michael Rosen’s relatives were lost before he was born, in the Holocaust. First, he wondered about them. And he wrote poems. Next, he searched for their stories. And he wrote poems. Then he found their stories. And he wrote poems. Now, in a companion book to The Missing: The True Story of My Family in World War II, Michael Rosen has brought together forty-nine of his most powerful poems, exploring the themes of migration and displacement through the lens of his childhood in the shadow of World War II, the lives of his relatives during that war, and migration, refugees, and displacement today and tomorrow, here, there, and everywhere. Throughout, atmospheric watercolors from master illustrator Quentin Blake evoke the hardship, exhaustion, isolation, and companionship of being on the move. At once intimate and universal, On the Move probes the power of art to adapt, bear witness, and heal.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536218107
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	02/08/2022
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	562,270
Product dimensions:	5.56(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.73(d)
Age Range:	10 - 14 Years

About the Author

Michael Rosen is the internationally acclaimed author of The Missing: The True Story of My Family in World War II and Michael Rosen's Sad Book, both illustrated by Quentin Blake, and many other books. A former British Children’s Laureate, he lives in London.

Sir Quentin Blake has illustrated more than 250 books by writers from Roald Dahl to Michael Rosen, in addition to his own picture books. In 1999, Sir Quentin Blake became the first British Children's Laureate. He lives in London.

Table of Contents

Migrant Poetry x

Family and Friends

Where Do We Come From? 2

Two Languages 4

The Songs My Father Sings 6

A Word 8

My Father Says 10

Newcomers 12

Ships 14

My Friend Ken 16

Bubbe and Zeyde 17

Don't Tell Your Mother 22

My Friends' Eyes 24

My Friend Robert 26

My Friend Roger 28

The New School 29

The War

The War 32

Skeletons 35

Bratwurst 37

My Friend Mart 39

France 41

Utah Beach 43

Counting 46

The Migrants in Me

The Absentees 50

The French Uncles 51

Finding Out 52

Nothing 56

Dear Oscar and Rachel 57

Dear Oscar 60

Compassion 62

Martin Rozen, My Father's Uncle 64

Whose Fault? 66

Late at Night 69

Yours Hopefully 71

Cousin Michael 74

Leosia 80

Arriving 84

Today; One Day 86

On the Move Again

Never Again 90

Don't Drown 92

Water 93

Homesickness 96

Gone 101

Overheard in a Classroom 102

My Dad 103

Where? 106

English Literature 107

The Migrants in Me 110

Everyone Comes from Somewhere 112

On the Move Again 114

Today 118

Resources and How to Help 119

Acknowledgments 124

Editorial Reviews

A graceful tapestry weaving together personal and global perspectives and a heart-rending memoir of human endurance.

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

The anonymous and atmospheric art complements Rosen's message extremely well. . . In these honest and pensive poems, Rosen probes his own past to prompt readers to contemplate their own feelings around global displacement. . . artfully explores the human experience of displacement.


—Shelf Awareness (starred review)

Moving. . . Blake's watercolor-and-ink illustrations, reproduced in blue/grey tones, accurately reflect the verses' moods and speak to the difficulties faced by migrants then and now.
—Booklist

From the Publisher

03/18/2022

Gr 4–8—Rosen writes poetry about his life as a young boy in London, his understanding that family members disappeared during World War II, and his search for them and their stories. The introduction defines the difference between migrants and refugees—an important distinction today as the world fills with both. Poems are divided into four sections: "Family and Friends," "The War," "The Migrants in Me," and "On the Move Again." Thoughtful readers will be aware that Rosen's search has no easy answers. The poems are not straightforward or simple, but more evocative of a child's feelings about the knowledge of missing family members as empty places in a family history, as well as how the search for answers brings some clarity and even more mystery. Sections on war and the disappearance of family are truthful, but without unnecessary trauma. Not until the back matter do readers learn that the poems are an extension of Rosen's book, The Missing: The True Story of my Family in World War II. Resources include a list of organizations supporting refugees and people affected by displacement, as well as a list of charities and organizations with information on the Holocaust. Illustrations by Blake in watercolor, using mostly gray and shades of blue, are evocative and complementary to the poems; they mostly depict people on the move without details, but the people are clearly either running toward or away from something. VERDICT These touching poems are important today and any day that requires people to think about war, family, and refugees.—Susan Lissim

School Library Journal

★ 2021-11-16
Former U.K. Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen illuminates issues of human migration by attempting to fill the gaps in his Jewish family history.

His introduction explains the distinctions between migrant and refugee and divides the collection of mostly free-verse poems into four thematic sections. In the first section, “Family and Friends,” Rosen explores his immigrant roots by reflecting on significant experiences and people from his childhood. In one deceptively simple poem, “The Songs My Father Sings,” he ponders his paternal ancestry: “Where has my father been? / Who sang the songs that he now sings / and what do the songs mean?” Two poems recall antisemitic slights by Rosen’s childhood classmates. The second section, “The War,” pieces together parental reminiscences of World War II and of family travels in postwar Europe. In “The Migrants in Me,” the potent third section, Rosen investigates missing family members. His father testifies, “I had two French uncles. / They were in France / at the beginning of the war. / They weren’t there at the end.” In the narrative poem “Finding Out,” Rosen painstakingly unearths information about these uncles—Oscar and Martin—and discovers old photos of them in a long-hidden box of family memorabilia. A duad of wrenching poems directly address Oscar and his wife, Rachel, imagining their emotions during escape, discovery by Nazis, and shipment to Auschwitz. Yet another poignant elegy, “Cousin Michael,” memorializes Rosen’s father’s cousin, evacuated to safety as a teen by parents he’d never see again. The final section, “On the Move Again,” explores the disruptions that uproot people and bring different cultures into contact. In Blake’s blue-washed watercolors, faceless figures trek beneath glowering, threatening skies.

A graceful tapestry weaving together personal and global perspectives and a heart-rending memoir of human endurance. (resources) (Poetry. 8-14)

Kirkus Reviews