Friends Laura Jarrett and Poppy Harlow wrote a book to help kids describe love

Real-life friends, Saturday TODAY co-anchor Laura Jarrett and CNN news anchor Poppy Harlow, teamed up to create a sweet children's book about the many forms and shapes that love can take in our lives. The book, "The Color of Love," will be available in bookstores starting tomorrow.

The women stopped by Studio 1A today to chat with Savannah Guthrie about their book and their friendship.

"This is a dream interview," gushed Savannah. "I know Laura separately, I know Poppy separately, and then I find out that you guys are dear, dear friends and have a book together. How did this come about?"

The women called the book their "Covid baby".

"We were in the office every day during Covid doing the show, and it was pretty much just the anchors and some of the producers," Harlow said. "So we decided to collaborate on this together."

Since Covid was so difficult for everyone, Harlow said they wanted to "share this message of love and inclusion," and they wanted to do it together.

"There are so many books out there right now that are celebrating diversity and inclusion," Laura said. "But I think part of what we wanted to do was to have the children narrate what they were seeing, and narrate the reasons why that you can find the color of love in all different ways instead of having adults talk to them about it."

Laura's kids, James, 4, and June, 1, as well as Harlow's kids, Sienna, 8, and Luca, 6, appear as illustrated versions of themselves in the book. And the hearts that are featured throughout the book were based on construction paper hearts that the families cut out themselves in Laura's living room.

Funnily enough, Laura's youngest daughter, June, had not been born the first time the families took photos for the back of the book, so they restaged their casual photoshoot to include June after she arrived.

"The reviews are in from your kids at least," Savannah said. "What do they think?"

"James has a lot of thoughts, mostly because there is a child named James [in the book]. He has to point out how he's different from that one," Laura joked. "You know how people don't let their husbands read something? I didn't let James read it because I knew he would have a lot of feedback."

This article was originally published on TODAY.com