Actress hopes to help raise self-esteem of girls with book

Actress Jada Pinkett Smith is used to playing strong, tough women in movies such as “Collateral” and “The Matrix Reloaded.”

Now she’s adding her name to a growing list of celebrities who are writing books aimed at empowering girls.

Like “The English Roses” by Madonna and “The Blue Ribbon Day” by Katie Couric, Pinkett Smith’s “Girls Hold Up This World” (Scholastic, 40 pages, $16.95) is aimed at building girls’ self-esteem.

On the cover of the book is a photograph of Pinkett Smith kissing her 4-year-old daughter, Willow. She says she wrote the book, in part, for her daughter.

“I wrote the book for Willow and for her friends and for all the little girls in the world who need affirmation about being female in this pretty much masculine world,” says Pinkett Smith, who also has a son, Jaden, 6, with her husband, actor Will Smith.

“Girls Hold Up This World” is illustrated with photos of women and girls looking happy, strong and determined, all taken by Pinkett Smith’s photographer friend, Donyell Kennedy-McCullough.

“I really tried to capture different sides of femininity,” says Pinkett Smith, 33. “I want girls in the world to feel powerful, to know they have the power to change the world in any way they wish.”

Among the book’s messages: “When we show our softer side, that doesn’t mean we’re weak” and “We are sisters of this Earth – members of one powerful tribe.”

Pinkett Smith says her grandmother Marion taught her a lot about being independent. “She let me know I could do anything,”she says.

She also remembers a friend of her grandmother’s who told her: “You have more talent in the tip of your pinkie than most people have in their whole bodies.”

Pinkett Smith hopes the book will offer the same affirmation to girls today.

“What I tried to do with the book is create statements with ideas that might jump out at girls and stick in their minds,” she says.

The actress, who most recently starred in the Oscar-nominated “Collateral” with Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise, says “Girls Hold Up This World” is based on a poem she wrote.

Smith was the book’s catalyst, she explains.

“He is always reading through my stuff, and he read this poem and said, ‘You should make this a book.’ “