Madonna: Bedtime Stories of a DIFFERENT Kind?

By Paul Majendie

LONDON (Reuters) - Harry Potter taught kids around the world the joy of reading. Now 9-time RAZZIE "winner" Madonna is going global in the thriving kids' book business with a publishing first: The pop superstar's first children's book -- "The English Roses" -- is being published simultaneously in more than 100 countries and 30 languages.

State-of-the-art technology has sent language barriers tumbling so printing plants around the world can spring into action in every tongue from French to Faroese. "This is a publishing first with regard to numbers of languages and territories," said Nicholas Callaway, President of the New York-based Callaway Editions, the originating publisher, who has coordinated the global release. "We have languages as varied as Chinese and Czech, Thai and Turkish, Hebrew and Hungarian," he told Reuters. Internet advances have shrunk the globe. "This would not have been technically possible 18 months ago. We send so many digital files through the Internet," Callaway added.

More than one million copies are hitting bookstores around the world at once, backed by a marketing blitz that takes Madonna from London to Paris, then on to the Oprah Winfrey talk show in the United States.

Critics may carp at the spotlight focusing on Madonna, a self-described genius at both spotting and setting pop and fashion trends. Helen Fraser, managing director of Penguin Books who will be publishing the book in Britain, concedes that cynics will grumble about hype as the 45-year-old mother of two bursts into print after years as a raunchy pop icon and failed movie star. Her only previous book was the graphically illustrated coffee table S&M tome, SEX. "Whenever somebody as famous as Madonna does something, cynics will use the "H" word," she told Reuters. Fraser apparently was referring to "hype" and not "whore," -- which actually starts with a "w."

Fraser insists that the book -- the first of five written by Madonna for kids -- will "appeal to people from eight to 80, not just dirty old men like her SEX book!"