Michael Wayne Rosen (born 7 May 1946) is an English children's novelist and poet, the author of 140 books. He served as Children's Laureate from June 2007 to June 2009. He has been a TV presenter, political columnist, and an advocate of British republicanism. Rosen was born into a Jewish family in Harrow, Middlesex. His father Harold (1919–2008) was born in Brockton, Massachusetts, the son of communist parents; he settled in the East End of London at the age of two, when his mother returned to the country of her birth. While a member of the Young Communist League, Harold met Connie Isakofsky, his future wife and Rosen's mother, in 1935. Harold was a secondary school teacher before becoming a professor of English at the Institute of Education in London, and Connie was a primary school teacher before becoming a training college lecturer; she also broadcast for the BBC. Producing a programme featuring poetry, she persuaded her son to write for it, and used some of the material he submit.. …