Rebecca's Reviews > Many Different Kinds of Love: A story of life, death and the NHS

(2.5) Rosen’s bout with Covid-19 in March 2020 was big news in the UK as he’s a beloved children’s poet. He was in a medically induced coma for six weeks and had a tracheostomy tube. His chances of survival were only about 50/50, and once he did finally come around he had a long recovery process ahead of him. It was his third time learning to walk – he was hit by a car at age 17. Letters from the medical professionals who looked after him in intensive care (most of whom were specialists in other areas but stepped up during the pandemic) helped him to piece together the story of his hospitalization and are reproduced here, as are his wife’s updates to family and friends.

The rest of the book is composed of Rosen’s poems, which are … okay. I didn’t grow up with his children’s stuff (We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, etc.), so I don’t have a nostalgic love of his style and for the most part found it obvious and artless: “I am not sure I am me. / I can’t see as I used to see. / I can’t hear as I used to hear. / My legs feel like cardboard tubes, / filled with porridge.” The best example of his verse is “These Are the Hands,” which he wrote for the 60th anniversary of the NHS and is appended here. Illustrations by Chris Riddell.