SAN FRANCISCO—As a musical based on her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Color Purple” continued its run blocks away, Alice Walker told a group of women Wednesday that the United States’ military presence in Iraq is morally wrong, and to ensure the country’s next generation understands her views, she’s written an anti-war children’s book.

“War is an idea, but it’s never a good one,” she said. “We bomb whole cities to get 25 people. Who elects people who think that way? Bombing (other people) is like bombing yourself.”

Walker addressed a sold-out audience of 275 people, almost all of whom were white, affluent women who paid $25 per ticket. The San Francisco-based International Museum of Women hosted the event, which was designed to raise awareness of Walker’s social activism; it kicked off with a one-hour wine-and-cheese reception at the Omni Hotel, a luxury lodge in the Financial District.

Speaking to a sea of skirts, boots and business suits, Walker said she began writing so she could record the lives of her parents, Willie Lee and Minnie Tallulah Walker.

“There was no record of my mother,” said the 53-year-old. “No school had anything to say about her. I found this intolerable.”

Walker’s father, a sharecropper, became the first black man to cast a ballot in the author’s native Eatonton, Georgia, and he walked past three white men with loaded shotguns to do it, she said. Willie Lee Walker voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt “so there would be change,” she said.

“If people like (my parents) had run the country, I can tell you the country wouldn’t be the way it is,” she said.

Readers may be familiar with Walker’s six novels and volumes of short fiction and poetry, but she has also written five children’s books, the latest of which is “Why War is Never a Good Idea.” Published a year ago, the 32-page book of poetry is intended for 4- to 8-year-olds. On one page, a smiling frog and a pink flower float in a pond, an illustration accompanied by the line “Huge tires/of a/Camouflaged/Vehicle are/About to/Squash/Them flat.”

“I as an elder now can’t believe our children aren’t taught what war is,” she said. “They’re taught it’s okay to hurt people we’ve never heard of and kill people they should be playing with.”

Walker said she especially despises seeing young people wear clothing with camouflage patterns. “They even make camouflage diapers now,” she said.

An advocate of children’s education, Walker judged an essay contest at an Oakland high school in the fall. She describes herself as a “womanist” and advocates for cultural change and gender equity. The best way for people to become social advocates, she said, is to get to know themselves well. “You are the most interesting person you will ever know,” she said, “but do you know yourself? Self-knowledge is good — by any means necessary.

“We’ve been enslaved in so many ways, and I don’t mean just black people — our minds are in chains,” she said, pointing out that wonder and imagination are often forgotten in modern society. “We may be here for only five more minutes. Live it!”

For more information about the International Museum of Women, visit imow.org.

Talia Kennedy is a student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Reach her at tmkennedy@berkeley.edu.