USA TODAY Review

‘Roses’: Hearts will bloom
By Deirdre Donahue, USA TODAY
Sigh. In anticipation of reviewing Madonna‘s new children’s book, The English Roses, released today, this reader’s finger was poised above the vitriol key on her computer. After all, this is the author whose most famous opus was the X-rated Sex.
Madonna latest book is a big contrast from her last one.
Like many parents, I consider TV Satan’s personal sewer pipe to my kids’ brains. Which also conveys my thoughts on pop culture and public smooches with Britney. Don’t cry homophobia: I detest televised sexuality in all its variations.
Now having read The English Roses, I am devouring crow. The book should be read to girls in kindergarten and up as an emotional vaccination against the social exclusion and cruel cliques that mar many young girls’ lives. Talk to teachers and you will realize that today’s elementary schools can be amphitheaters of cruelty.
The story explores several issues, among them the idea that one can be envied or pitied and the emotional deprivation that often motivates overcompensation in both children and adults. (Madonna’s adult fans will want this book because it offers insights into where the Material Girl gets that nuclear power-plant drive.)
Four English schoolgirls have formed a tight friendship circle. (They like boys, so they are older than 6.) The four dance, have sleepovers, have nifty-looking bedrooms and clothes. (Jeffrey Fulvimari‘s froufrou illustrations with their Day-Glo hues serve as a magnet for pint-sized alpha girls.) The tale incorporates elements of the Cinderella story and sympathetically suggests what motivates those mean stepsisters. There is no prince, thank God.
The four dislike a girl named Binah. She is the kind of overcompensating child whom adults praise. She is smart, beautiful, athletic and kind to others. Perfection itself. The author makes it clear that it’s normal to hate what you envy. But Binah is sad and lonely.
One night during a sleepover, a fairy godmother visits and takes the quartet on a secret viewing of Binah’s life. As in Madonna’s childhood, Binah’s mother is dead. Binah keeps house for her father and cooks and cleans, tasks the quartet’s moms do. Her dreary bedroom is nothing like theirs. The only lovely thing: a photo of her mother. (The story will resonate with those who have lost a parent as a child through death or desertion.) The four realize Binah should neither be envied nor pitied but treated with kindness and included in the group.
Forget Madonna’s wild ways. She offers a vital message for girls. Judge the book, not the author.