It's my books at bedtime, says Madonna

Ce sont mes livres à l'heure du coucher, dit Madonna.

Aida Edemariam
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday November 12 2008 00.01 GMT
The Guardian, Wednesday November 12 2008

It is probably fair to assume that no one is at their best in a custody battle. There is so much at stake: the children's futures and who gets to shape them; which million- pound home goes to whom; and hurt pride - perhaps especially hurt pride.
But most people get to keep the details to themselves; not so Madonna and Guy Ritchie, whose every foible and feint is now being picked over by a national press unable to believe the richness of the carcass. The most recent "leak" from what ought to be a private combat zone is a list of rules that Madonna apparently sent along with her sons, Rocco and David, when they arrived in London to see their father for the first time in weeks.
Some are quite sensible, or at least understandable: the boys are not allowed to read newspapers or magazines; Guy should not discuss the separation; they should be allowed to call their mother; they shouldn't be introduced to any new female friends Guy might have accrued. Then there are the less understandable ones: all water they drink must be Kabbalah water, their toys must not be "spiritually" unsound - but these are par for the Madonna course. What really raises the eyebrows is the last order: David must be read the English Roses books that Madonna wrote.
It is true that there now exist translations of these books into Chichewa, a Malawian language, but one suspects, perhaps ungenerously, that Ritchie's Chichewa is not as fluent as it might be. So let's assume David is being read these books in English. They are by his adoptive mother, yes - but unless he is an unusual little boy, one would expect this fact to be offset by the saccharine-pink flurries of rivalry between London schoolgirls Charlotte, Amy, Grace, Nicole and Binah, who by the time they graduate from picture books to chapter books are flipping through the Times and Vogue, being promised trips to Milan Fashion Week, given bottles of Stella McCartney perfume, and told in no uncertain terms not to be "afraid to go after what you want, because you deserve it". Is there a message for Ritchie there?
Other than the undoubted punishment of wading through all that leaden prose, of course?

Source: The Guardian.