After recovering from Covid-19 last year, British poet and children’s author Michael Rosen will soon be releasing Sticky McStickstick, a personal memoir picture book that depicts his time in hospital and his recovery.
The 74-year-old former Children’s Laureate spent seven weeks in intensive care last year, between March and May, after contracting Covid-19.
During his rehabilitation, he used a hospital-issued walking stick he named Sticky McStickstick.
In an interview published on The Bookseller, Rosen says, “Dear old Sticky McStickstick sits in the corner by the door waiting patiently for me to call on him to help me with my walks. Sad to say, I don't need him anymore, and yet there was a time in the Rehab Hospital when he was the only way that I could dare to take a few steps across the ward, then later, down the corridor to the loo. I loved him. He gave me a mobility which only a few weeks earlier I could only dream of. And then he gave me the means to do without him! Such self-sacrifice!”
“I loved writing about these things and thrilled that it's going to be a book with my great friend Tony Ross doing the artwork, ” he adds.
Sticky McStickstick is a story of perseverance and a testament to the importance of overcoming fear and accepting help.
The book is illustrated by Tony Ross and published by Walker Books.
It is set for a November release.
Rosen’s Covid-19 ordeal will also be outlined in another book - for adults - that will be released this week (March 18).
Many Different Kinds Of Love: A Story Of Life, Death And The NHS, published by Ebury Press, details his hospitalisation and road to recovery.
It includes a selection of new poems and extracts from the ward diary kept by the nurses who cared for him.
He says of the book: “I’ve been writing pieces about what hit me, how I’m coping or not coping with Covid-19. They come out as a mix of wry and emotional observations on myself and the people who have been caring for me. I meet the Covid and its effects head on and I hope this will throw light on what serious illness feels like and help people to reflect on what it means to struggle to recover.”
Rosen is a prolific writer, with more than 150 books to his name, including We’re Going On A Bear Hunt, Dear Mother Goose, Red Ted And The Lost Things, Chocolate Cake and Wouldn’t You Like To Know.
In 2004, he wrote Sad Book about his grief following the death of his son from meningitis in 1999.
He served as Children’s Laureate from 2007-2009.
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