Poet Michael Rosen delves into his affecting family history in his contemplative and compelling collection about migration and refugees, On the Move. Forty-nine of Rosen's poems, evocatively illustrated by Quentin Blake, are arranged in four sections--Family and Friends, The War, The Migrants in Me and On the Move Again--through which Rosen prompts readers to consider the connectedness of one family's experience of the Holocaust to the broader movement of people in crisis worldwide.
Rosen (We're Going on a Bear Hunt) captures his youthful moments in London with a stream of consciousness, memories pouring forth poem by poem, family stories and mundane encounters evoking nostalgia while inviting reader reflection. The former U.K. Children's Laureate juxtaposes the universality of the human experience of migration with an admonishment of xenophobia and persecution: "We say, 'Never again.'/ But/ .../ it can happen again. It does happen again. It has happened again." Rosen arranged previously published works for this collection, which he bookends with a helpful introduction entitled "Migrant Poetry" and backmatter that includes a link to some of his spoken poems.
Blake (The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots) punctuates the anthology with evocative watercolor illustrations. His distinctive, jagged line art conveys a camaraderie and hopefulness among the displaced figures as they move across land and water on double-page spreads with increasingly saturated violet hues. There is a kinetic urgency to Blake's work here, and the 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. --Kit Ballenger, youth librarian, Help Your Shelf