Re-Express Yourself

In Her Latest Incarnation, Madonna Makes Herself Over As a Children’s Book Author
By Linton Weeks – Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 29, 2003
With the successful publication of her children’s book, “The English Roses,” Madonna morphs into yet one more life form: She’s the next-generation Martha Stewart.
Here is what “The English Roses” is not: shocking. There’s nothing shocking about it — except its shockinglessness.
Here is what the book is: a clever, if somewhat clunky, edge-free story of four pretty, petty-minded girlfriends who ostracize a fifth, the beautiful Binah, out of sheer green envy. They cut her down. They ignore her. But eventually, with the help of a fairy godmother, they learn that Binah’s life is not so blissful and they invite her to join their clique. There’s no blood, no bondage, no conical-comical bras.
It will debut at the top of the New York Times‘s children’s picture book bestseller list Sunday, according to its publisher. Last Thursday afternoon, it was the second best-selling children’s book on the Web sites of Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The book is available in 30 languages and in more than 100 countries.
Like Martha Stewart, Madonna teaches us how to live. Like Stewart, Madonna saturates mass market America. She went on “Oprah” to promote the book. “Roses” is being sold in Wal-Marts and discount stores and Toys R Us outlets across the land. GapKids has been giving a matching tote bag if you buy the book and a bunch of other merchandise.
Can Madonna tea cozies and pillowcases be far behind?
And like Stewart, Madonna has made out — monetarily — on most of her ideas.
This time around, Material Girl is Maternal Girl. Mamadonna.
“Raising kids,” Madonna, 45, says in a statement about the book, “makes most people, including myself, grow up at least a little. It also makes us more responsible and more thoughtful about our own actions and their consequences for those around us.”
She adds: “Reading to my kids at night seemed like the ideal time to teach them a thing or two about life, love and the pursuit of happiness.”
The woman who once begged her papa not to preach is now a preacher herself.
The book is short, if occasionally wordy, and gaily illustrated by Jeffrey Fulvimari. It’s all very down-to-earth and domesticated.
From the jacket flap: “Madonna Ritchie was born in Bay City, Michigan. She has recorded 16 albums and has appeared in 18 movies. She lives with her husband, movie director Guy Ritchie, and her two children, Lola and Rocco, in London and Los Angeles.” The book is dedicated to Lola (whose real name is Lourdes) and Rocco.
There is a lot, of course, that the flap doesn’t say.
Now that Madonna is an author, her influence stretches beyond the boardroom and the bedroom to the baby’s room. It seems like only yesterday she was feeling like a virgin. Today she’s more like a sword-wielding magician, slicing through popular culture at all angles.
We have been bemused by Madonna’s metamorphosis.
When we first met her around 1984, she was wearing all white and writhing like a snake. Good girl gone bad.
Through the 1980s she grew up a little faster than even bad girls should. By 1989, she was singing “Express Yourself” and prancing around in a black teddy and stockings. In 1992 she turned dominatrix in the “Erotica” video, donning a blindfold-mask and carrying a quirt. That same year she published her first book: “Sex.” The New York Times was not impressed.
“Too bad she comes off like a CEO instead of a sex goddess,” the reviewer wrote. “Madonna’s book is less the display of an erotic imagination than a cliched catalogue of what the middle class — her target audience, after all — is supposed to consider shocking.”
Like Martha Stewart, Madonna is always hawking a way of life that is just out of reach for most folks. “Sex” debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list and sold 1.4 million copies. Today “Sex” still sells: Copies are rare and go for $120 or more on the Internet.
Her ch-ch-changes continued. She was blond, brunette, redheaded and topless in the 1995 video for “Bedtime Story.” She played with politics in the 1996 movie “Evita” and with comedy in her 1999 video “Beautiful Stranger” with a song from the movie “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.” Just last month, she caused an uproar by kissing Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera on stage at the MTV Video Music Awards.
Now she’s starring in Gap ads — with rapper Missy Elliott — and wearing white again. This time the bad girl has gone good.
“The journey I have traveled between my ‘Sex’ book and now is too vast and complex to define in a few sentences,” Madonna says in her statement. “Suffice it to say that I see the world and my responsibility to it in a very different way.”
As for her inspiration to write, Madonna credits her Kabbalah teacher, “who suggested that I share the spiritual wisdom I’ve learned studying the Kabbalah by writing children’s stories.”
Kabbalah is a set of mystical Jewish beliefs dating from the 12th century. According to the Kabbalah Centre International Web site, “the universe operates according to certain supremely powerful principles. By learning to understand and act in accordance with these precepts, we will vastly improve our lives today.” The modern Kabbalah movement was founded in Jerusalem in 1922 by Rabbi Yehudah Ashlag, the site says.
Madonna’s proceeds from “Roses” will go to the Spirituality for Kids Foundation, a Los Angeles-based organization that oversees camps and programs for adults and kids, including the Kabbalah Children’s Academy.
On the group’s Web site, Madonna says, “Since my daughter has been going to the Spirituality for Kids program I have noticed a profound change in her. She has become more loving and much more aware of her behavior and how it affects the world around her.”
Throughout Madonna’s public life — the sex and the sects — a generation of females have followed her peripatetic psyche. Witness the testimonials on Amazon.com.
“Madonna,” a reader from Millersville, Md., writes, “I’m glad you put your wonderful storytelling talent on paper! I grew up loving you through music, now my children (I have three) can grow up loving you through your words and pictures.”
Another writes: “Madonna is one of the most intelligent women to ever walk the planet. Anyone could learn something from her and her story, including your kids. Mine do! This is a great book.”
These Madonna Moms are not alone.
Teena Keogler is crazy about Madonna. “Has Madonna made an impact on my life? Absolutely!” she says. “Madonna has been such a motivation for me and my two young girls. We adore the woman.”
A resident of suburban Philadelphia, Keogler, 31, works part time in a camera and video store. She and her husband, who manages a car dealership, have been married nearly nine years. They have two daughters, ages 6 and 8. She ordered “The English Roses” online, and the day it arrived she sat down with her daughters immediately after school and read the book to them.
“They’ve always liked Madonna because of me,” Keogler says. “Now they can relate to her. They’ve seen her videos. They’ve seen her on TV. My youngest daughter’s favorite movie is ‘Evita.’ ”
Keogler believes she has evolved as a person along with Madonna. “I kind of feel like I’m growing up with her,” Keogler says. “She’s an idol. She’s wonderful.”
By modeling Madonna’s behavior, Keogler feels she’s more brutally honest about being herself, no matter what others think. “If people want to make judgments, let them,” she says. “I like the way Madonna dresses. I like the idea that she changes constantly. She doesn’t stick to one style. She’s a chameleon.”
Though Keogler had never shopped for herself at the Gap before, “I went in and bought a ton of stuff because I wanted to get the Madonna CD they were offering.”
Keogler took home a bag of corduroy pants and jeans, “the low-rise kind, of course!” She adds, “I also paired a few of them with the matching jackets — soooo cool!”
She understands that her daughters are too young for some of Madonna’s mayhem — the sex book, for instance, and the “Truth or Dare” documentary. “I don’t think everything she does should be for everybody’s eyes,” she says. But she appreciates Madonna’s sultriness, the sexiness.
And the MTV kiss?
Keogler thinks that “the entire performance was entertaining.”
The kiss, she says, was no big deal. “I thought it was perfect for the act – two brides, one groom and the kiss.”
“Roses” is the first of five children’s books by Madonna. They are being published by Callaway Editions, a boutique New York publishing house.
The next book, “Mr. Peabody’s Apples,” will go on sale Nov. 10. And three more are planned after that. Callaway will not reveal the illustrator for “Apples,” but included in “Roses” is a publicity bookmark showing a man and a boy on a split-rail fence.
In the illustration, the kid seems to be freeing feathers from a pillow. It’s a fanciful picture, yet safe and non-shocking.
The sky is a beautiful blue. Martha Stewart would approve.

Thanks to Cosmic System
Source:Washington Post