Yahoo Sports How Channing Tatum's daughter inspired his new children's book, The One and Only Sparkella and the Big Lie
One must not tell a lie. Especially the One and Only Sparkella.
The newest addition to Channing Tatum's children's book series The One and Only Sparkella and the Big Lie, out now, finds our sparkly pal Sparkella excited for a playdate with a new student at her school. In order to impress him, she "borrows" a toy car from her best friend, which spirals into a series of fibs and lies.
This story, and the character of Sparkella herself, is based on Tatum's own daughter Everly "Evie" Tatum. "It was eating her up that she took it," Tatum tells EW about the real-life story that inspired the book. "She was so nervous to tell me, but then when she told me she felt better."
Tatum tells EW about the upcoming Sparkella live-action movie (and he teases an upcoming animated TV series adaptation announcement), and he offers his advice for parents when they've caught their child in a lie.
Feiwel & Friends; Cindy Ord/VF23/Getty The third book in Channing Tatum's series 'The One and Only Sparkella.'
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: This is the third book in the Sparkella series of books. If someone has already read the first two, what would you say is unique about this new entry in the story?
CHANNING TATUM: If you have kids, you teach massive life lessons almost every day. They're having to negotiate all of their emotions, all of their mind and everybody else's minds and emotions as well. The first book was about managing nerves and expectations when you don't know how something's gonna be. What can you do to calm that down and to look inside? You don't need to look outside of yourself. The second book was really when things are not going how you expected them to go. And this one, we were talking to a lot of teachers and child psychologists and they said kids around 5 years old really start to experiment with lying — it's very prevalent around this age. I remembered a time where my daughter had taken a car, a toy from school. It was eating her up that she took it. She was so nervous to tell me, she didn't wanna tell me, it was making her sick. She felt so bad about it. But then when she told me she felt better and we returned the little toy car. It was really fascinating. So we took a little inspiration from that: Spark's first time that she's gonna lie and has to apologize and realize that the burden of carrying it is worse than just accepting it and apologizing for it.
Any advice for parents that have caught their kid in a lie or want to teach their kids about staying truthful?
The biggest thing is that they think they're going to be in trouble. It's better to show them, especially very early, when the lies aren't that big yet, because they will get bigger. And that's just the natural course of the world, I guess. I say to Evie "You're not gonna be in trouble with me. I'm not gonna be mad at you. You know what you did wrong. As long as you understood that this is not okay to do, and you know that you're going to apologize and rectify it, that's it." It supports them telling you the truth forever after that, no matter how big or small — When that very first one happens, you have to try as much as you might be upset or want to teach them a lesson. I'm not a child psychologist or even a teacher for that matter, but in my experience, being really soft with Evie was very helpful.
There is an adorable part of the book where Sparkella thinks her dad is going to call the police on her.
We definitely did joke when she was little if [she didn't eat] or if we didn't make her brush her teeth or go to school, the cops would come. We were just joking. You say the littlest things and they go into the software in these kids' minds and they'll just extrapolate out from there and they create a world for it. And it's kind of what's amazing about them, but also a little treacherous to navigate sometimes.
Any new developments on the previously announced Sparkella film?
We're still pretty early. We don't have a director yet. Most kids' movies are animated movies now, which are genius films — a lot of people are making incredible animated movies. But I miss movies like Honey, I Shrunk The Kids and Bed Knobs and Broomsticks and Return to Oz, these larger-than-life but real movies where you go into this real world that's a fantasy and it has a little bit different stakes. We have a script. We could possibly go into Sparkella's imagination or into her magic. Making movies are a long, long process and you kind of have to be able to roll with the punches in a way. We also have hopes of making an animated TV series — hopefully, we'll be rolling some of that stuff out, at least the announcements of them soon.
Father's Day is this month — do you have a favorite memory from a past Father's Day?
I haven't thought through this weekend, much less Father's Day. Well, Evie and I have a tradition that every Father's Day or on my birthday — she gets to pick which one, it's usually Father's Day — I get a pair of shoes that are painted, a pair of either Converse or Vans. It was Vans this year and she's getting really good now. So I have one for every single year that she's been alive. Even her year one, one shoe has a bunch of dots and paint on it, and then the other shoe barely has any because she got bored halfway through and she was just like, eh, I don't wanna do this anymore. So it's a really interesting progression of shoes that I have, and it's a really cool collection.
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