Garcelle Beauvais' Biracial Twins Inspire Book for Mixed Kids

“We’d go to bookstores and libraries all the time and I was like, ‘Why aren’t there any pictures of kids that look like my kids?'” So fretted actress Garcelle Beauvais, mother to biracial sons. She was so frustrated by the situation, she went ahead and wrote a children’s book herself.

Beauvais, who just released her book, titled I Am Mixed, tells Ebony:

A book like this is necessary. Conversations between parents and kids are important, about race issues, about all kinds of things, about heritage…

I think you can start talking to them as early as possible. It’s just giving them the right information for their age. Like I think with my kids, I can have a conversation about heritage, about mommy being Black and daddy being White and having a conversation.

Beauvais believes the world is more diverse now, and that people are “more open-minded,” and points to that now-famous Cheerios commercial, which made her emotional:

When I saw the commercial I went, “Wow! Finally!” Finally it’s about love, it doesn’t matter what color your skin is, it’s about having… how about an intact family? How about that?! I mean, the fact that the dad and the mom were living in the same home? There’s so many beautiful things about that commercial that for somebody to find hate, it was just insane.

The book already has celebrity fans like Heidi Klum, Jaime Pressly and Laura Ling, and the foreword is by Halle Berry, who calls the book “an invaluable teaching tool that all children from all races can learn from.”