Geri Halliwell is bringing the Spice Girls' signature power to a new children's book.
Geri Halliwell is forever a Spice Girl, but to her two kids, she'll always be mama first.
Nearly three decades since the iconic British girl group's debut, Ginger Spice and the rest of the gals have carried on -- much like their legacy. For Halliwell, that time has included parenthood as she's mom to daughter Bluebell, 17, and son Montague, 6. While the younger one was not alive to witness the Spice Girls phenomenon, he's still reminded of his mom's pop star days on the playground.
"He's got lots of girlfriends in the playground and one of them said, 'Your mother's a Spice Girl,'" she told ET's Rachel Smith. "He's like, 'Yeah, whatever. I want my bedtime story.'"
For Bluebell, the Spice Girls find their way into her life through her closet. "A little bit, in a sort of nostalgic, vintage way she'll wear a sweatshirt or something like that," Halliwell said of her daughter. "It's nice."
Ultimately, though, they're not looking for Ginger Spice. "They just want their mother," Halliwell said. "It doesn’t matter who you are, what you do -- I think any mother at home can relate to this. They just want what they want."
But will they see Mom back in platform boots and onstage with the ladies again anytime soon? "For me, the Spice Girls belongs to the whole world -- I’m really proud of that and I love being with the girls," she said, "but I think, when I engage with something, it’s like any project is like children, OK, so I want to give it my 150 percent, so right now the child that I’m focusing to get out the gate to go to school is Rosie, Rosie Frost."
Continued Halliwell, "It's taken me a long time -- off she goes... There will be a time when the other girls get together and that will be amazing and I always love -- we have such fun."
Rosie Frost is the protagonist of Halliwell's newly published children's book, Rosie Frost and the Falcon Queen, the first in an upcoming trilogy. As the star explained to ET, Halliwell let a bit of her own backstory inspire the plot of her young character.
"She loses her mother at a very early age," she said. "When I was at school and I was slightly older, but in my teens, I was studying Hamlet... He loses his father and then a teacher comes in and tells me they need to speak to me and then they tell me that my father is dead... It was the most surreal experience because I was really young and I didn't know how to process it."
The newly orphaned Frost is sent to Bloodstone Island, "home not only to a school for extraordinary teens, but also a sanctuary for endangered species. There, Rosie confronts a menacing deputy headmaster, a group of mean kids intent on destroying her, and shocking family secrets. She also discovers that history can come to life in ways she never could have imagined," a synopsis reads.
As Halliwell said, "I think universally we all want to belong... It doesn't matter who you are."
"I think, you know, to stand up for yourself no matter whether... you're at school or it’s a working environment, if you feel disempowered or marginalized in any way, to find your voice, sometimes that’s challenging," she continued. "Rosie, she faces that, you know, whether it's through mean girls or the deputy head or just challenges in general."
"It’s about finding the courage you never knew you had and I think a real hero is ordinary," she added. "There’s no super power except your heart -- finding that courage."
While fans continue to cross their fingers for another Spice Girls reunion, Halliwell says she's tried to inject their signature girl power into her main character. "If Spice Girls is Disney, Rosie Frost is Pixar," she said. "It's just an evolution."
Rosie Frost and the Falcon Queen is available now.
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