The English Roses across the United States. In the United Kingdom, "The English Roses" sold 8,270 copies according to BookScan and was ranked number 17 on the top-selling list. It was the second best-selling children's book, with 220 fewer sales than author J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix". Worldwide the book went on to sell a million copies by April 2005. "The English Roses" received moderate reviews after its release. Ayelet Waldman from "Tablet" questioned whether Rabbi Baal Shem Tov, whose morals were the inspiration behind Madonna's writing endeavors, did really ask "to be nice to pretty girls
Ring a Ring o' Roses article from the "Brooklyn Eagle". A group of young children (the eldest being about seven) form a ring, from which a boy takes out a girl and kisses her. An early version of the rhyme occurs in a novel of 1855, "The Old Homestead" by Ann S. Stephens: <poem> A ring – a ring of roses, Laps full of posies; Awake – awake! Now come and make A ring – a ring of roses.</poem> The novel goes on to describe a nineteenth-century Fourth of July celebration by children housed in a hospital in Roosevelt Island, New York (then known as