I am angry.
Really angry.
Angry, angry, angry!
We’re not sure why this little kitten is angry but we see him jumping up and down, rolling on the ground and being not very nice to one of his little friends. He’s so angry he scares the spiders and even roars at the tigers! He catches a poor little cockatoo and confuses Mrs Kangaroo who ends up with other animals’ babies hiding in her pouch!
This little kitten hasn’t finished yet. There are balloons to burst and giants to frighten and best of all a big tin of paint to turn the sky red! No wonder this little kitten is exhausted.
The littlies will have no trouble relating to this rather angry kitten. They will love Robert Starling’s big, bold, colourful and clever illustrations with all the different faces on our little hero. At the front of this book, Michael Rosen writes a note to the Grown-ups. In it he says, ‘By gently laughing at one of these big rages, I hope a child will see their tantrum alongside that of the character in the book – and that, even if anger can feel terrifyingly BIG, it doesn’t actually last long!’
Don’t miss it. It’s such fun!
Reviewed by Merle Morcom
Age Guide 4+
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
When I was 11, I went to a school called Harrow Weald County Grammar School. My brother was there already. It was a mixed school, with a grey school uniform. While I was there, I loved doing acting and writing stories and I started to write poems. I had some very good friends, especially someone called David, who was very interested in painting and jazz.
When I was 17, we moved house, so I moved schools to Watford Boys Grammar School. Around this time, I thought that I would quite like to be a doctor. A friend of ours who was a doctor said that I could carry on studying English, History and French, and I could start doing all the science and medical things when I went to medical school. So that’s what I did.
So I went off to the Middlesex Hospital Medical School. But I wasn’t happy and I hatched a plan: if I went to the same college as my brother, it would be fairly easy to change back to doing English. So I was very lucky and got into Wadham College, Oxford. I did one more year of medical things, and then changed to English Language and Literature. All the time I was at university, I spent many, many hours writing, acting and directing plays.
While I was at university, I wrote a play called ‘Backbone’ that was put on at the Royal Court Theatre, in London. This was my first ever book.
When I finished university, I went to work for the BBC. First of all I worked on radio plays and documentaries, then I went to work for a children’s programme called ‘Playschool’ and after that, I worked in BBC Schools Television where I wrote a programme helping very young children to learn how to read. It was called ‘Sam on Boff’s Island’.
My first book for children was called Mind Your Own Business and it came out in 1974. Quentin Blake did wonderful line drawings for it.
Ever since then, I’ve been doing these things:
- writing books
- writing articles for newspapers and magazines
- coming to schools, libraries and theatres and performing the poems in my books – they’re like shows really
- helping children in schools write poems and stories and other kinds of writing too
- making radio programmes, mostly about words, language or books
- appearing on TV, either reading books, or talking about books
- teaching at universities about children’s literature
- running workshops for teachers about poetry, reading, writing of all kinds, ‘reading for pleasure’ across whole school communities
In any week, I might be doing all of these things! To tell the truth, I don’t really know what I’m doing tomorrow, unless I look in my diary to see.
Starting out from about 1974, on other days of the week at a rate of about 3 a month (or sometimes more), I’ve been visiting schools, doing a mix of performances, talks and writing workshops, sometimes working in school halls, sometimes in classrooms.
In the 1990s I studied for an MA and then a Ph.D – in children’s literature and writing.
I have also helped bring up seven children, one of whom, Eddie, died.
I support Arsenal Football Club.
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