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 English Roses because their lives might be harder than ours." The reviewer noted Jewish influences in the story with the name Binah, and the character calling her father "papa" and wearing a "shmatte" on her head. Kate Kellaway of "The Observer" described the story as "written in language that veers between Hilaire Belloc and breakfast TV", finding the tone arch and strained but containing charm. She felt Fulvimari's illustrations made the book look like "a party invitation with his pictures of a garlanded, girly existence: each English rose a fashion-plate, with a doe-eyed stare, caught up in a whirl of blue butterflies,