Madonna’s The English Roses reached readers in September 2003 with an international publishing campaign, launch appearances, and a New York book signing. This retrospective follows that month’s documented events and explains what the surviving records can tell us about the book and its promotion.
The book behind the launch
The English Roses is a children’s picture book written by Madonna and illustrated by Jeffrey Fulvimari. The 2003 Callaway catalog record identifies the American edition with ISBN 9780670036783. Its story concerns schoolgirls in London whose jealousy toward another girl raises questions about friendship and assumptions about someone else’s life.
The writer and illustrator credits matter independently. A picture book asks readers to follow language and images together; publicity centered on a famous author can make the visual contributor less prominent. When describing or locating this title, include Fulvimari’s name as well as Madonna’s.
Use the ISBN and publication details when comparing copies. A later edition, translation, or another title using the English Roses name may have different contents or packaging. The launch history concerns the original 2003 picture book.
A September 2003 timeline
The records below distinguish the book’s release from appearances promoting it. All dates refer to historical events, not upcoming opportunities to attend a signing.
| Date | Event | Supporting record |
|---|---|---|
| September 14 | London launch appearance at Kensington Roof Gardens. | Getty’s archival footage record describes Madonna arriving and reading to children. |
| September 15 | International publication of The English Roses. | A later Callaway release on Madonna’s official site gives this release date. |
| September 15 | Paris garden-party appearance promoting the book. | Michel Dufour’s dated photo record at Getty documents the arrival. |
| September 29 | New York Barnes & Noble book signing. | A Reuters photograph cataloged by Bridgeman Images identifies the event and shooting date. |
A date in a photograph’s caption or shooting-date field refers to the recorded scene. An archive’s upload date may be years later. Reading those fields separately prevents a digitized historical item from becoming a supposedly recent event.
The Paris record supports a launch appearance; the New York record explicitly identifies a book signing. Keeping those event types distinct is more accurate than calling every promotional appearance a signing. An advance announcement would establish a plan, while these dated visual records document attendance.
Read the international campaign in its own terms
In the November 2004 Callaway press release preserved on Madonna’s site, the publisher described the September 2003 launch as simultaneous across 30 languages and more than 100 countries. Treat those figures as the publisher’s account of the campaign’s reach. They describe language and territory coverage, not the number of readers or copies sold.
That distinction helps explain the campaign without turning publicity into an independent sales audit. The London, Paris, and New York records show a sequence of appearances around the release. Together with the publisher’s account, they support a picture of coordinated international promotion; they do not establish a record-setting sales result by themselves.
The same retrospective release dates Mr. Peabody’s Apples to November 10, 2003. It places The English Roses within a broader sequence of Madonna’s children’s books. Keep that publishing sequence separate from later books about the English Roses characters when identifying a title.
Use the records to answer a precise question
Choose the source according to what you want to establish:
- Which book or edition? Match title, writer, illustrator, publisher, year, and ISBN in a catalog, then check the title and copyright pages of the copy in hand.
- Where and when did an appearance happen? Look for a contemporaneous report or dated photo/video record that names the location and event.
- What did the publisher claim? Read the dated release and preserve its attribution when summarizing it.
- What does a particular signed copy establish? Examine its own provenance. Evidence that a signing occurred does not authenticate every inscription associated with that date.
For example, the September 29 Reuters record supports the sentence “Madonna attended a New York Barnes & Noble signing that day.” To connect a particular copy to that event, you would need additional evidence about that copy. The event record alone supplies neither its ownership history nor a collectible value.
To explore how rankings differ from broad success claims, see understanding bestseller lists. For guidance on writing about the book itself, see reading and writing book reviews. Keep judgments about the reading experience distinct from the scale of the launch campaign.