Michael J. Rosen

Michael J. Rosen (born September 20, 1954), is an American writer who has written children's picture books, adult poetry and novels, and edited a range of anthologies. He has acted as editor for Mirth of a Nation and 101 Damnations: The Humorists' Tour of Personal Hells, and his poetry has been featured in The Best American Poetry 1995.

Early life Rosen was born in Columbus, Ohio, the eldest of Marvin and Nona Rosen's three children. His childhood, and part of his adulthood, were filled with summer camp, an institution which he attended as a camper from age four to thirteen and as a counselor from fourteen to twenty-six. His favorite place at school was the art room, where he spent his free time; after school Rosen would continue with his artistic inclinations through drawing, collecting comics, and spending time at the advertising agency operated by his friend's father. He finished as an animal behavior major in 1976 and attended St. George's University School of Medicine in Grenada before working as an instructor for Ohio State University through 1985. He began his career as an author in 1984 with the publication of a book of poetry called A Drink at the Mirage. His most popular works include Any Body's Guess!: Quirky Quizzes About What Makes You Tick, Mirth of a Nation: The Best Contemporary Humor, 101 Damnations: The Humorists' Tour of Personal Hells, The Cuckoo's Haiku, and Elijah's Angel: A Story for Chanukah and Christmas.

Rosen has illustrated several works, The Blessing of the Animals, Food Fight: Poets Join the Fight Against Hunger with Poems to Favorite Foods, and a variety for Gourmet (magazine) and The New Yorker.

Books Mirth of a Nation: The Best Contemporary Humor, originally published in 2000, is an anthology of contemporary humor written by over fifty comedians, writers, and other funny fellows, and edited by Rosen. Mirth of a Nation was reviewed by January Magazine, with Jonathan Shipley saying, “Michael Rosen ... has collected some funny writing. Seriously, it's good stuff.” Rosen said that “Mirth... and More Mirth of a Nation make another claim: That humor writing is seriously funny. Now of course I mean "genuinely" funny, but I also mean also "seriously" as in "profound" — humorists are among the few dependable sources of honest (re)calibration and reality checking.” The volume was published in 2002 as an audiobook, and in 2007 in hardcover format. Rosen also edited two additional humor anthologies in the same vein, More Mirth of a Nation (published November 2002), and May Contain Nuts (published September 2004).

The Cuckoo’s Haiku and Other Birding Poems is a book of haikus on birds, written by Rosen and illustrated by Stan Fellows. It was given a starred review by Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, as well as being named a Best Book of 2009 by Kirkus Reviews. It was nominated for the 2009 Cybils award for poetry and won the 2010 Ohioana Book Award for Juvenile Literature. Publishers Weekly’s review said of the book that “text and images, like a well-rehearsed duet, balance and echo each other’s beauty.”

Balls! is a humorous factbook about the history of "a host of spheroids (and one notable ellipse) that make the sporting world go round". Balls! has been reviewed by the National Center for the Study of Children's Literature and the Midwest Book Review. It was named a Junior Library Guild Premier Selection. The book's title character is based on Elijah Pierce, a barber nearby to whom both Rosen and the book's illustrator Aminah Robinson lived. was named an American Bookseller's Pick of the Lists, was designated by Parents' Magazine as the Best Book of 1992, and was the inspiration for a family opera by composer Robert Kapilow.

Awards Rosen has received the National Jewish Book Award for Elijah's Angel: A Story for Chanukah and Christmas, the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance Once Upon a World Book Award for A School for Pompey Walker, the Juvenile Literature Ohioana Library Award for The Heart Is Big Enough, and the Ohioana Library Career Citation in children's literature.

Rosen established a granting program, The Company of Animals Fund, in 1990; the program "offered support to animal welfare agencies providing emergency or ongoing care to companion animals from the profits of seven books and two touring illustration exhibits." Rosen said, "It has been an enormous honor to precipitate such collections and a concomitant reward to know that these generated funds offer such lasting benefits. Rather than imagine this a unique design, I hope that such collective philanthropy becomes a perennial enterprise in publishing."