When Madonna makes news, she makes it big time.

The fuss over her open mouthed smooch with pop diva Britney Spears at the recent MTV Video Music Awards hasn't died down yet. Incidentally, at the same function, she also lipped it up with Christina Aguilera -- which appears to have gone largely unnoticed.

Then again, Britney is tabloid heaven, but Christina who?

Madonna is back on front pages -- this time, for the release of her children's book The English Roses, a 48-page offering priced at an expensive $19.95, published by Callaway Editions.

Today (Monday, September 15) the book released in over 100 countries, and in 30 languages -- according to the publishing trade, this is the largest simultaneous global release of any book.

And it is just the beginning -- Madonna plans this as the first in a five part series, with the second instalment due November 10.

The pop-icon told the British press, during a promotional tour, that the book attempts to explore feelings of envy among 11-year-olds in contemporary England, and that it has an autobiographical undertone.

US-based Jeffrey Fulvimari illustrates the book, which also draws on Madonna's researches into the Jewish Kabbalah. The idea for the book, Madonna told the media, came after reading bedtime stories to her daughter Lourdes, 6.

"The women in Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty or Snow White are really passive," she told the press during a tea-party launch in London on Sunday. "They don't move the story along. They just show up, they are beautiful, and they get snapped up by the princes, the princes tell them they want to marry them and then they go off and live happily ever after. What's a girl supposed to get out of this? That is such a load of crap."

Standby, then, for politically correct bedtime reading. And about that kiss? No big deal, says Madonna. "It was the sort of kiss you give your sister."