The English Roses her character where kids would stop and go, 'Wow! What would that be like?'" Binah's character was also influenced by Lourdes since Madonna felt she was often ostracized for being her daughter at school. Finally, "The English Roses" became a moral story with messages from Kabbalah, deduced from tales that Madonna had heard from her teacher. She also included messages about the perils of envy, ostracization, and assumption of other's lives. For "The English Roses", Madonna worked with illustrator Jeffrey Fulvimari, whose work on the book was described by Ginny Dougary of "The Sunday Times Magazine" as ""Madeleine" meets David
The Stars and the Roses the "San Francisco Chronicle" called the piece "a short but lushly expressive suite of three orchestral songs" and wrote, ""The Stars and the Roses" needed no help in making its effect felt. With its poignant, resourceful orchestral writing and clarion text-setting, the piece illuminates Milosz's poetry (in English translation) in a subtle but evocative way." Jeff Dunn of the "San Francisco Classical Voice" similarly lauded, "The orchestration is the immediate strong point of the piece, but unlike the in-your-face symphony, Stucky's motivic content and progression may require repeated listenings for its subtleties to become manifest." Stucky rewrote the piece in