Hi, here is the education team of Vista Looking at the World: Vista Growth Lab. We pay attention to education, pay more attention to people, and accompany parents and children to grow up together.
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Humor is a way of survival.
Written by | Shi Yuexin
Edit | Shen Jiayin
Eyebrows were raised, eyes were opened, the corners of the mouth were raised, a satisfied "Nice" blurted out with a loud smack, and a demonic emoji was born.
The protagonist of the meme is Michael Rosen, a famous British children's literature writer and poet, who has won the title of "Fairy Tale Poet Laureate".
The meme, which has its own voice, is a children's poem by Rosen called "Hot Food", which tells the story of how "I", dad, mom and cousin ate hot potatoes. Each screenshot in the video can be made into an emoji.
"We sat down to eat, but the potatoes were hot, so I stuck a small piece with a fork and (whooped) to make it cooler, a little cooler, and then put it in my mouth, tbh, NICE."
This funny and mischievous "old naughty boy" has recorded many of his works into a video, and exaggerated expressions and just the right interpretation will always make people raise the corners of their mouths and laugh madly as soon as they see him.
At the beginning of last year, the 74-year-old unfortunately contracted the new crown and gradually recovered after 7 weeks in the intensive care unit. After his recovery, he also wrote the fairy tale book Michael Rosen's Sticky McStickstick.
The book, with its usual Lawsonian humor, chronicles his journey from being completely unable to stand up on his own, to being able to stagger and walk, to finally being able to walk home alone and proudly, back in the open arms of his family.
"Michael Rosen's Sticky McStickstick"
"If I had to make a list of the greatest physical accomplishments of my life, one of them would be to learn to walk again last year. This book reminds us that some very ordinary achievements can also be amazing. ”
One of Grandpa Nice's most famous works is The Book of Sorrows. When you read his story and look back at the old man, you will definitely laugh and cry.
# 01
"This is my sad look"
Eagle hook ears, long angular nose, round eyes, a long grin to the base of the ear, and the iconic tooth, this is Quentin Black's dark pencil drawing of Rosen. Under this portrait, Rosen wrote the following passage:
This is a portrait of this sad man.
Maybe you think I'm happy in the portrait.
In fact, I was very sad, but pretended to be happy.
I did this because I thought that if I showed sadness, people would not like it very much.
Rosen has five children, two of whom are stepsons. His second son, Eddie, died of meningitis at the age of 18.
Grief-stricken Rosen created The Book of Sorrows. In this book, Blake chronicles Eddie's journey from infancy to growth. He plays with toys, he plays football, he lies in bed and reads, he plays with his friends and runs... These are the happiest images of Eddie in Rosen's memory, until the final picture of the story is frozen in that blank square.
Rosen came home that night and saw Eddie lying lazily on the couch like he had a cold. He started telling jokes to Eddie and coaxing him to sleep, but when Rosen got up at 6 a.m. the next morning, he found that Eddie was no longer breathing.
Grief came menacingly, overwhelmed him, and surrounded him. "I love him, but he's dead." "How can he say that he will go away and die when he says he will die?" How could he make me sad like that! ”
There is no escape. Scenes of Eddie came to mind, and Rosen longed to talk to Eddie again. He remembered Eddie laughing with his friends on that street, Eddie playing the old man on the school stage, Eddie pretending to be the goalkeeper and throwing the pillow he threw...
Rosen went to kindergarten more often and returned to the children to tell them stories. Sometimes, he also tells Eddie's story.
When the kids ask "How old is Eddie now?" Rosen was speechless for a moment and could only reply, "He just died." The children nodded as if they understood. Months later, children will still ask this question.
Rosen was impressed by the child's concern for the fate of others. He wanted to give his children an answer, and "The Book of Sorrows" was the answer to that question.
On the last page of the Sad Book, Rosen lights a candle alone, nostalgic for blowing candles on his son's birthday.
Rosen in The Sad Book
Rosen likes passers-by who seem to come and go, thinks of his mother who holds an umbrella for himself in the rain, thinks of the old party...
"It is precisely because of the beauty of life that the sad Rosen has the courage to live, and this courage is like the candle at the end of the candle that illuminates the dark night." Chen Jing, a teacher of the department of Chinese at East China Normal University, feels that Rosen is like a weak fighter in the book, even if every recollection means facing the grief and uncovering the wounds again, but he still does it, constantly breaking the gray darkness of sadness and encouraging people to be brave.
# 02
Happy childhood by the dump
One of Rosen's most famous works is "We're Going to Catch a Bear." "We're going to catch a big one/ The weather is so good / There's nothing to be afraid of..." This was originally a very old Camping Song in England. Rosen uses his imagination to interpret it as an adventure story of a family going to catch a bear, which is brisk and catchy, perfect for parent-child reading.
In those warm pictures, I seemed to see the shadow of Rosen's childhood.
Rosen was born in 1946 in Harrow, London. Until the age of 17, he lived with his family in a small, cramped apartment with a spacious alley behind the apartment, which was a must for all cars, vans and trucks to transport goods. Construction workers such as carpenters, plumbers and painters gather here.
Nearby is a junkyard, the most precious amusement park of Rosen and his friends' childhood.
Illustration of "We're Going to Catch a Bear"
Rosen's parents were both elementary and middle school teachers. Despite his family's poverty, his childhood was steeped in his parents' stories and jokes. Fathers liked to sing to their children in different languages and read Shakespeare's plays to them. The complex English words and phrases in the play grew up with Rosen and gradually sparked Rosen's interest in words.
The best thing his brother, who is four years older than Rosen, is to put on a parody show. In their bedroom, the brother showed Rosen another gesture with exaggerated and funny bodies and language. "He used to tease me so much that my brother was like another parent to me, and in his mind, everything the school taught him, he had to teach me."
In this way, his childhood surrounded by laughter and laughter shaped Rosen's optimistic and humorous personality, and the scenes that made him laugh in his childhood became a valuable asset for his future creations.
Fast forward to the age of 11, rosen and went to the same school as his brother, when he fell in love with acting and writing.
"I started writing poetry, writing about what I did when I was younger, about girls, about nature and nature, and I wrote about these things very seriously." In sixth grade, Rosen was heavily influenced by Gerald Manly Hopkins, often spending hours, almost paranoid, searching for rhyming and symbolically regular words.
Rosen was fortunate enough to be admitted to Oxford University in the "English Language and Literature" major. He began to dive into screenwriting and acting, and his first work, Blackstone, was moved to the stage of the Theatre Royal during college.
From 1972 to the present, Rosen has been practicing freely. He wrote books, wrote articles for newspapers and magazines, taught school children to write, did children's literature performances, did radio shows...
Rosen wrote a large number of poems about his childhood experiences, but he was not intended to show them to children. It wasn't until Rosen's first collection of poems, Mind Your Own Business, was published by a children's book press in 1974 that he began to devote himself to nearly 140 children's books in a variety of ways. "Some are entirely written by myself, some are collections of other people's poems that I excerpt, and some are adapted from folk tales."
# 03
"No breathing in class"
Rosen often performs his comedy poems in class. When he once performed Chocolate Cake in an exaggerated and hilarious way, he noticed that "the children would look at the teacher as if they were asking with their eyes, 'Can we laugh?'" ''Is this allowed?'' ’”。
In the face of such a situation, Rosen believes that although it is natural for children to study seriously, children are already faced with too many "oppressive" things in an education system full of exams and knowledge, and "humor can make them rest and relax a little."
Rosen has criticized the system and form of instructional writing in Britain today on several occasions. "We cannot continue to ignore the relationship between the current examination system, the harsh school culture they create, and the deteriorating physical and mental health of children."
"No Breathing in Class" is a collection of short poems written by Rosen, who adapted and recreated what often happened at school.
"No Breathing in Class"
One of the short poems describes a psychopathic dictator teacher who makes very perverted rules to demonstrate her strictness, such as not allowing students to breathe in the classroom.
"We had a very strict teacher and we weren't even allowed to breathe in her class. She used to stand in front of us and say, 'Don't breathe!'" So the children had to hold their breath all morning.
At the beginning of the week, there were 48 children in the class. A week passed, and there were only 5 children left in the class. At the perverted request of the teacher, the weak students fell to their deaths one by one. A child asked the teacher, "Can I go out and breathe?" But he was also rejected by the teacher.
Rosen brilliantly performed the poem and made it into a video, which has been played more than 11 million times since it was published on YouTube in 2008.
Rosen's YouTube account is called Kids'Poems and Stories With Michael Rosen. Rosen once again showed his genius — how to use humor to make children laugh.
He interprets his work in an exaggerated, funny way. "Kids need humor to unleash it so the world isn't so scary."