ABC/Jeff Neira(NEW YORK) — Nick Cannon is out with a new children’s book. His poetry book, titled Neon Aliens Ate My Homework, is dedicated to his twins with estranged wife, Mariah Carey, Monroe and Moroccan. And although he filed for divorce from the singer in 2014, Cannon told ABC Radio he doesn’t consider himself a single father.
“I never really thought of that term. I consider myself a father, you know? The word single is not really registering for me right now, because I’m not focused on that,” he explains. “But a father, first and foremost, I like that term. That’s probably the most important title that I have right now.”
Cannon’s 3-year-old twins also helped him craft his new book. “They were kind of the test to which ones were really good and which ones worked. I would read [poems] to them, or I would kind of make up ones with them,” he explains. “And all the songs or little poems we would [say] that they really liked or that they would sing over and over, those would be the ones that I would put into the book.”
The host of America’s Got Talent told ABC Radio what inspired him to write the book.
“I was inspired by artists and poets like Shel Silverstein. He taught me what poetry was all about,” he says. “That’s where it all came from for me but I wanted to give it a hip-hop twist because I’m a figure in the hip-hop generation and that’s how I see things, through hip-hop lenses. So I was like, hey let’s be able to put what Shel did mixed with a little street culture and see what we could come up with.”
Cannon tapped graffiti artists, such as Captain Kris and Queen Andrea, to help him illustrate the book. He even illustrated some poems.
“It was cool,” he says of drawing for the book. “It was quite the experience to kind of dive in, not only on the writing side, but to connect with different artists to help bring the vision visually.”
Neon Aliens Ate My Homework is on bookshelves now.
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