The beautiful and talented actress Jessica Lange can now add another role to her resume: children’s book author!

The star of the hit drama series American Horror Story chatted with Parents magazine about her first foray into writing and how she used her own photographs to illustrate the book.

“I’ve done photography for quite a while…I became very interested in the old colored postcards, the hand-tinted photographs,” says the 64-year-old grandmother of two.

As she began hand-tinting her own photos, Lange never expected to share her creations outside of her family. “But it spiraled out of control,” she says, “and now it’s a book. This is a story I made up for my granddaughters.”

The book, entitled It's About a Little Bird, follows two young girls as they poke around their grandmother’s farm. When they come across an old birdcage, the grandmother shares the backstory behind the animal that once inhabited it.

So what was the overall process like for the Oscar-winner? “Putting together a book is brand new territory for me. I don’t know how it’s going to be perceived,” says Lange. But as an actress known for taking on a variety of roles she can honestly say, “It’s good to do things that mix it up a little bit.”

Check out some of Jessica’s photographs from this inside look! at It's About a Little Bird.