I Co-Wrote My First Children's Book!

It's called ROCK PAPER SCISSORS CHEESE, and you can preorder it NOW!

In 2014, my family moved back to the Bay Area after our two-year New York City sabbatical (AKA launching and crashing my first TV show, Totally Biased). At the time, my family consisted of my wife Melissa, our three-year-old daughter Sami, and me. Although when we returned to the Bay Area, we knew there was a sister for Sami on the way. Melissa was very pregnant with our second daughter, Juno. Initially settling down in Berkeley, we had the challenge of building a brand new life in our old stomping grounds.

I remember doing a panel at the East Bay Book Festival not long after we arrived. My old friend Jeff Chang had invited me to have a conversation about something or other. Jeff had also booked another old friend of ours, Favianna Rodriguez. Rounding out thr panel was and a Berkeley writer that I had not met before named Adam Mansbach. I knew of Adam’s work. When I was first doing my Obama-era solo show, The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in About an Hour, it was at the same time that the play based on his book, Angry Black White Boy, was in the Bay. I also knew Adam’s name because of the mega-bestseller children’s books parody that he wrote called Go The Fuck To Sleep. Famously, the audio book was read by Samuel L. Jackson. YES, THAT SAMUEL L. JACKSON!

When we met, Adam was a single dad with a six-year-old daughter–the daughter who had inspired Go The Fuck To Sleep. We bonded as Bay Area folks who had “Hollywood careers” but were determined to stay in the Bay. (Adam is also a screenwriter. He wrote the better young Obama film Barry.) Shortly after I met Adam, he met his partner Jamie, and they had two daughters. Suddenly, Adam and I were bonded by something more than often taking Southwest Airlines’ flights from OAK to BUR. We were both in the very rare Dads with Three Daughters Club!

Our combined six daughters are just out of frame. Phot by Ashleigh Reddy/stayreddy photography

Through the years, our families have done all kinds of things together–from the tire swing outside Adam’s house to summering in The Vineyard. Last year we even did the back-to-back-to-back holidays of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Kwanzaa together. Adam is also part of Old Man Breakfast. If you don’t know about Old Man Breakfast, it’s when me and a few other middle-aged dads go to a diner and talk about fixing the world’s problems and coordinating their kids’ very busy schedules. Fixing the world’s problems is easier.

Adam and I have often worked together to fix the world’s problems. We’ve made various political PSA’s. In the long ago year of 2015, we wrote a series of letters to each other to try to encourage white people to take Donalfd Trump’s candidacy seriously. We even caused a Twitter hashtag go trend worldwide: #WhitesAgainstTrump. (How’d that all work out?) We spoke at a white privilege conference once. (It is possible that one of us or both of us had one or two too many drinks before that one.) We also have regularly supported each other’s work. Adam interviewed me in Oakland when my first book, The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell, came out in 2017. We are often conversation partners at San Francisco’s City Arts and Lectures. While we attempt to stay focused on whatever the topic at hand is, often we eagerly go off the rails. Famously, at one that we did for his books Fuck, Now There Are Two of You and A Field Guide For The Jews, we talked about our vasectomies. As we were going over how easy the procedure was, the doctor who had done our vasectomies revealed that he was in the audience. Adam has also been one of my go-to Jewish voices on how to talk about Israel’s war on Palestine.

Adam has also written legitimate children’s books. You know, ones without swearing. He co-wrote a series of middle grade books with actor/comedian Craig Robinson called Jake the Fake, and weirdly, Adam wrote New York Times bestselling children’s book with Camilla Alves McConaughey. Before you ask, yes she is. She is Matthew McConaughey’s wife.

So I guess I should not have been surprised when Adam proposed that we write a children’s book. I thought it could be a good idea since we had done so many other things together, and we always have a good time. In classic fashion, we met for Old Man Breakfast and hashed it out over some hashbrowns. (Okay, nobody had hashbrowns.)

I discovered that I had certain non-negotiables for our book.

Me: It has to rhyme. I get annoyed when children’s books don’t rhyme… unless you are Mo Willems. He can get away with not rhyming.

Adam: Okay.

Me: Also, I don’t want it to be Kamau Teaches Kids About Racism. I get why people would want that from me, but I really want a book that reflects my family. We don’t just sit around talking about racism all the time. I want one of those kids’ books that are a romp--an adventure! Silly. And funny.

Adam: Okay.

To be fair, Adam is never this succinct and agreeable. I’m sure he’s reading this now and will send me his version of this conversation.

We also talked about the possibility of the book starring my family. I knew I would have to check with them first. But I also thought that it would be more fun for me (and hopefully for them) if they were apart of the book. My wife Melissa and I had talked a lot about whether or not to include our daughters in our 2023 HBO documentary 1000% Me: Growing Up Mixed, because we had always worked hard to keep them out of the public eye. Ultimately, we decided that it would be so awesome for Juno and Sami to be able to share their experiences on film, and they also made it clear that they really wanted to be in it. To this day that project remains one of my favorites, because it isn’t my film; it is my family’s film. This new book with Adam seemed like another opportunity to work with my family on another one of our projects.

Somewhere over the course of breakfast with Adam, I brought up the game Rock, Paper, Scissors. Adam mentioned that his family played their own particular version of the game. We settled on a book where my family plays a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors that quickly gets out of control. In typical Adam fashion, he sent the first draft to my email that evening. Adam works quickly. Also in typical Adam fashion, before I had a chance to read it, he had sent a second version with the subject headline, “Read this one instead.” Adam also is constantly revising.

I read that version to my family. They laughed, suggested some edits, had lots of questions, and insisted on some edits (mostly my youngest Peanut did this). Most importantly, they let me know that they were onboard with the idea of being in a book. I gave the good news (and the notes) to Adam. Over the next few weeks, Adam and I talked about the rhyme scheme, the mechanics of the game, and if each character properly reflected the members of my family. The book includes Melissa, Sami, Juno, Peanut, my mom, and me. As every edit came in, I would read it to the whole family.

When we sold the book the whole family was involved in picking the illustrator. Thsi was a big deal. We needed someone who could handle all the different hair types, the different skintones, and the nuanced facial expressions of our family. We found the perfect person in our amazing illustrator, Breanna Chambers, and then there were even more fervent discussions about what everybody wore. My favorite part was making sure that everybody’s skin tone accurately reflected how they see their actual skin tone. Five people. Five different shades of humans. While I didn’t want to write a kids book about racism, I did want to create a book that many different shades of kids could maybe see themselves in. Also, us families with mixed race kids can use a book that features us just having a good time.

Presenting Rock Paper Scissors Cheese!

Check out the Bell family in cartoon form! Illustrations by Breanna Chambers.

An ordinary game of rock, paper, scissors riotously goes off the rails in this rhyming, rollicking celebration of family and fun from two three-time dads: Peabody and Emmy award-winning producer and stand-up comedian W. Kamau Bell and mega-bestselling author Adam Mansbach.

A bit after lunch
on day eight of the rain
The youngest Bell, Peanut
remembered a game . . .

Sometimes, she thought
nothing else quite delivers
like the old school fun
of rock paper scissors.

But the Bell family doesn’t play your grandma’s version of the game . . . In their household, paper may beat rock, but what beats paper? Well, cheese, of course!

Join the Bells on a delightful romp with the most chaotic and inventive game of rock, paper, scissors you’ve ever seen! Featuring hilarious illustrations from Breanna Chambers, Rock Paper Scissors Cheese is an infectiously fun rhyming read-aloud about making the best of a boring day stuck indoors. And how, ultimately, any place shared with loved ones can be the best of all.

The entire crew! Illustrations by Breanna Chambers.

Now, I need you, my Who’s With Me’ers! (Is that what I’m calling you all?) Rock Paper Scissors Cheese comes out THIS YEAR on October 27, 2026. Can you preorder a copy of our book? I have included some pages for you to check it out. As you will see, it is beautifully illustrated and funny for kids ages 4-8 and adults ages 18-however old those life extension billionaires end up being. The pages of Rock Paper Scissors Cheese are filled with the joy of my family and Adam’s too.

If you have kids in your life (mixed ones or not), it is a perfect gift. If you are a mixed race family, then hopefully you will see someone who reminds you of yourself in these pages. And if you don’t have any kids in your life, pick one up to have on hand the next time you meet a kid.

Although October seems like a long way off, preordering the book really helps the book launch out into the world. You can preorder it at your favorite independent bookstore or from bookshop.org. Bookshop is a website that supports independent bookstores… unlike that other “book” website. As it gets closer, I will be announcing live appearances where me and Adam will talk about the book and most certainly go off the rails.

Who’s With Me?

Following up on my Substack piece about Andrew Tate

In my last piece Substack Chooses Andrew Tate Over the Human Race I asked you all a very serious question: Should I stay on Substack or should I go somewhere (hopefully) less friendly to Nazis and white supremacists? Overwhelming the answer from my paid subscribers was that I should stay. Meanwhile off the platform the resounding answer has been LEAVE! Suffice it to say, I’m still hear… for now. I can confirm that my piece on Andrew (one of my most shared and most discussed pieces ever) made it’s way to the folks in charge of Substack. Rapper and activist Talib Kweli wrote a piece that I generally agreed with, although his headline of W. Kamau Bell vs. Andrew Tate made my stomach jump. The great journalist Karen Attiah weighed in too. Over the last couple weeks I realized that one of the big issues I have with Andrew being so highly boosted on the platform is that it makes it hard for me to recruit people (audience and creators) to Substack. If they Google “substack” Andrew Tate will come up in the results. Yuck. I look forward to a formal and pubic response from Substack on this matter.

I say all this that to encourage everyone of YOU to let the owners of this platform how YOU feel about white supremacy and Substack encouraging hate speech and criminal behavior. When you speak out on the platform, be sure to tag the founders ( Hamish McKenzie, Chris Best, and Jairaj Sethi) to make sure they get the message.

Also, one point of my piece seems to have picked up traction in a way that I never intended. In my piece I wrote about how I block people on the platform. That was not in any way meant to be in opposition to people who report people on the platform. Block AND report, I say!

Support Black Voters Matter, especially now!

After the heaviness (and grossness) of last week’s piece, I wanted to write something lighter and more fun, so I was happy to have the children’s book to write about. But I can’t let you go without mentioning Trump’s Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act that helped give Black people the ability to vote (a right we should have already had). Red states are already working overtime to turn their blue congressional districts into red ones, through a system called packing and cracking. Let me be clear, red states have always done this, but now, thanks to Trump’s Supreme Court, they can be blatant about their white supremacist goals instead of sneaky. What do we do? We support the best Black led voters’ right organization out there. In my mind that’s Black Voters Matter.