Bob Odenkirk turnes poems into kids' book

LOS ANGELES

Bob Odenkirk has known he wanted to immortalize the playful poems he created with his kids since they were first scribbled down years ago.

The Emmy-nominated actor always assumed “Zilot & Other Important Rhymes,” hitting shelves Tuesday, would be a project he completed once his son and daughter had long been out of the house. “Maybe when I was a grandpa,” he mused.

But when the entire family hunkered down under the same roof for the better part of 2020, he and his daughter Erin, the younger of the two siblings, wanted to create something that fosters wonder and joy in children in the midst of abundant despair.

“We tried to make the most of the limitations, the situation. But you know, that was a hard time for everyone in the country,” Odenkirk recalled of the coronavirus pandemic. “Erin’s an illustrator and an artist. And I thought, ‘Let’s just get to work on that book.’”

So they dusted off the whimsical rhymes they had collaborated on nearly two decades ago. Odenkirk added some new ones and his daughter, who was remotely finishing up at the Pratt Institute, enveloped her bedroom wall with her father’s poems as she sought inspiration for accompanying artwork during study breaks.

“I’d put them on my closet door right by my desk. And I had this wall of pages,” Erin, now 22, recalled. “Every day, I’d pull like two or three down and I’d try to do a sketch.”

The duo looks back fondly on that time of collaboration. But they both admit the process was not without challenges.

“There’s tension there. I mean, think of any business partner or any project partner you’ve ever had,” the “ Better Call Saul ” star said. “You’re trying to make choices and decisions together. And in this case, you kind of can’t leave, both because there’s a pandemic and because you’re in a family together.”