Singer, sex siren, film star, stage actress, mother and, now, children's author - of all Madonna's incarnations, her latest role is the most incongruous. Eleven years after she published her X-rated book Sex - in which she poses nude and talks about bondage, bisexuality, and hanging out au naturel with rapper Vanilla Ice - Madonna has undergone another makeover in time to promote her foray into children's literature, The English Roses, which was published yesterday.
Her new demure image - she wore a white satin frock patterned with green foliage at a London tea party on Sunday - doesn't mean 'Madge' has gone soft. The book launch bears all the hallmarks of the Material Girl's fabled spin machine. With an initial print run of one million copies, Roses is published in 32 languages, including Chinese, for a worldwide release in at least 100 countries, unheard of for a picture book. Even Harry Potter might be jealous of Binah, the lead character in Madonna's modern-day Cinderella tale. Hong Kong's young fiction fans, however, will have to wait until later in the week for a copy as book stores here are awaiting the first shipment.
Madonna must hope her latest career change augurs better than her disastrous efforts at film and theatre acting. For once, the trendsetter is following a fashion. Many stars have dabbled in children's fiction - comic Jerry Seinfeld, British royal Sarah Ferguson, politician's wife Lynne Cheney, actress Jamie Lee Curtis, chat-show host Jay Leno and film-maker Spike Lee - with mixed results.
'I'm not interested in being recognised as a writer, I'm interested in getting the message out there,' Madonna said. 'The book deals with jealousy, envy and being covetous of what other people have and what a waste of time that is.'
A first glimpse of the book was offered on Sunday at an invitation-only reading where the glitterati and literati rubbed shoulders. 'I'm only going to read for as long as you can sit still,' Madonna told the assembled children of her guests. Flanked by her two children, Rocco, three, and Lourdes, seven, the 45-year-old singer sat in a swing, slipped on a pair of reading glasses and began: 'Have you ever heard of the English Roses? Here is what they are not. A box of chocolates. A football team. Flowers growing in the garden . . . '
The story turns out to be about four 11-year-old girls - the English Roses - and their mutual envy of a beautiful classmate, Binah, whom they ostracise. A fairy godmother teaches the Roses the error of their spiteful ways. The singer said she conceived Roses as the first of five children's books inspired by the Kabbalah, the system of Jewish mystical thought that she has been studying for seven years, but in reality it is a simple morality tale.
