Mariah Carey’s new children’s book draws inspiration from youth  

• For the record, she is 52 years old according to the Gregorian calendar.
• More importantly, she claims that her spirit is 12 years old.
• “Carey started writing poetry and music to express her emotions.

 Mariah Carey wants you to know that she will always be twelve. Please put this down on paper, she requests. This anomaly in the space-time continuum can be explained by her. (For the record, she is 52 years old according to the Gregorian calendar.) First off, the self-described “Queen of Christmas” lives from “Christmastime to Christmastime” rather than going through years. More importantly, she claims that her spirit is 12 years old.

It’s also the age she began learning the challenging but important — and ultimately profitable — life lessons she shares in her brand-new children’s book, The Christmas Princess, which went on sale Tuesday.

Mariah, the 12-year-old protagonist of the book, is not an autobiographical character. Carey declares, “It’s a fairy tale,” even though some of the facts resemble how she has previously described her upbringing. Unlike the other houses on the street, Little Mariah’s home is a “shack.” The boards of the stairs have protruding, sharp nails. The mother of the character is called La Diva. Patricia, Carey’s mother, was an opera singer. Other areas of overlap also exist.

“That’s the age when I learned I was definitely ‘other,'” she says. She was living in a small town on New York’s Long Island with her mother, who is white, and her father, who is Black. “It would’ve been great to actually be a chameleon, but I didn’t have the tools for it. Meaning we didn’t have money.”

Carey started writing poetry and music to express her emotions. She claims, “Writing saved me.” Songs like “Outside” from her 1997 album, which has the words “Standing alone/Eager to just/Believe it’s good enough to be what/You truly are/But in your heart, uncertainty forever lies/And you’ll always be/Somewhere on the outside,” was inspired by her childhood memories.

Of course, The Christmas Princess is holiday-focused since Mariah is Mariah. Even a recent celebration gave rise to it. Carey recalls that lightbulb moment: “I was preparing a batch of greens for Thanksgiving two years ago. We called them the Anointed Greens because they were that good. Wow, this is so different from when I was a kid, I remember thinking while I was cooking for my friends and family.”

She claims that Little Mariah’s ability to overcome the bullies, notably the blonde girls with board-straight hair who have the power to completely demolish a room with a toss of their hair, is the main lesson of the allegory.

“Her music rescues her,” Carey says, bringing up another parallel between Mariah and Little Mariah. “It’s not a Prince Charming who comes in. She saves her own day.”

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