Greg Davidson and Michael Wieder, co-authors of A Little Book About Trust, A Little Book About Home, and A Little Book About Love, talks about how sometimes even the littlest things can make a big difference in someone else's life to make them feel loved, to make them feel a sense of home, and to grow your trust with that other person or with yourself.
Greg Davidson and Michael Wieder, co-authors of A Little Book About Trust, A Little Book About Home, and A Little Book About Love, talks about how sometimes even the littlest things can make a big difference in someone else's life to make them feel loved, to make them feel a sense of home, and to grow your trust with that other person or with yourself.
A Little Book About Trust (view book)
A Little Book About Home (view book)
A Little Book About Love (view book)
Full Book Description:
For such a little word, trust means something pretty big! Trust is feeling safe, protected, and strong. And it’s something we can share and grow every day through what we do and say.
Home can be a place, a feeling, a person, wherever you feel safe and strong. And the coolest part is where our home is and who makes us feel at home only grows as we do!
We know a few things about love we’d like to share! Love is all around us, each and every day. And love is so big that it never, ever runs out.
About the Authors:
Greg Davidson (he/him) and Michael Wieder (he/him) are the co-founders of Lalo, and each have 2 little ones. They’re committed to supporting families and changing the way parents shop for their kids. Jenny Zych (she/her) is an illustrator living in upstate New York with her husband and 2 dogs. She loves making delightful images for all to enjoy.
*If you want to be on a future episode of A Kids Book About: The Podcast or if you have a question you’d like us to consider, have a grownup email us at listen@akidsco.com and we’ll send you the details.
A Kids Book About: The Podcast
Greg and Michael Talk About Love, Trust, and Home
[INTRODUCTION]
Matthew: Today we’re looking at three board books in our A Little Book About series to open up conversations about love, trust, and home.
Julia: It feels good to have someone trust you.
Michael: Trust kind of feels like, uh, the squeeze of a hug. It’s knowing there’s someone else with you, holding your hand while you cross the street.
Greg: Yeah, I think, you know, building trust is, knowing that you can rely on some on someone else.
Matthew: Welcome to A Kids Book About: The Podcast! I’m Matthew. I’m a teacher, a librarian, and I’m your host.
The voices you heard just a moment ago were from Julia, Michael, and Greg.
Each week we talk about the big things going on in your world with a different author from our A Kids Book About series.
Greg: Hi, I'm Greg Davidson. Uh, I'm a co-founder of Lalo, uh, and dad to Jace, who's two years old, uh, and dad to Sadie, who is uh, 16 weeks old. I'm the author of A Little Book About Home and A Little Book About Trust, that I wrote with my co-founder Michael Wieder, who's also here today.
Michael: Hi, I'm Michael Wieder. I am the co-founder of Lalo and the dad of Gemma and Zeke, and the author of A Little Book About Love and the co-author with Greg on A Little Book About Trust.
[TOPIC FOUNDATION]
Matthew: Hello, listeners! I want to do something a little different with you today as we spotlight some of our A Little Book About board books. I’d like to invite you to check in with your senses as you think about love, home, and trust?
Let’s start with love!
What does love look like to you? Think to yourself. What does love look like?
What does love taste like? Hmmm… homemade chocolate chip cookies. That’s one thing that love tastes like to me.
What does love sound like to you?
Julia: It sounds like when you care about someone and when, like, you're in a relationship with them.
Matthew: Oh I love that!
What does love smell like to you, listeners? That’s a tough one!
What does love feel like?
Michael: I definitely feel most loved the second I walk through the door coming home from work and my daughter Gemma screams and runs to me and gives me a big hug. That is one of the ways I certainly feel most love. But I also feel love when I get a phone call or a text message from my closest friends. When I'm doing things that I love too, just like sitting on the couch and watching a Michigan football game.
So it can be some of those everyday moments or it could be, you know, bigger, monumental moments. I think love shows up in all sorts of ways.
Matthew: Did you share your thoughts and feelings on love with someone near you? Someone listening with you right now? Or maybe you just thought your answers to yourself? Either way, I love doing this exercise with you!
What about home?
What does home look like, taste like, sound like, smell like, or feel like to you?
Julia: Home feels like to me when I'm with my family and I'm cared for by my mom and my dad.
Greg: Home, to me, feels like a place of comfort. Somewhere where you feel like you can kind of let go of the outside stressors. You can be the ultimate version of yourself. And I think, you know, there's a lot of connections between, I think all three books. Right?
Home, I think, is where I feel the most loved, you know, in the kinda comforts of my home. And also I'm with the people who I trust the most. So I think it's one of the really, really nice things about all the books is how there's this really nice theme throughout, you know, all three of them that really tie them together.
Matthew: Home is a feeling you may actually feel in more than one place. Places feel like home when we feel loved and safe and welcome.
Greg: Definitely, you know, at least right now, in my apartment with my two kids and my wife, that's clearly that is my physical home. But also the place that I think, you know, I feel the most comfortable.
You know, outside of that, you know, when it's not a necessarily a place, but when my family does things, you know, I have a brother who also has two children, his wife and my sister, and those moments where even we get together and we all have dinner now that we're, you know, eleven people, but those moments in time where it's not necessarily the place itself, but it's kind of the feeling you get when you are at home.
Matthew: Ask the people in your life about home for them. I wonder what they’ll share with you. I wonder what new things you’ll learn about them just by asking.
I saved trust for last because I think that concept might be a little harder to describe using all of your senses.
Julia: Trust feels like, to me, that, like, you're with someone, and you can, like… I don't know really much how to say it.
Matthew: When you think of someone or somewhere you trust, what does that look like, taste like, sound like, smell like, or feel like to you? Pick one sense and try to relate it to the word trust for you.
Julia: It feels good to have someone trust you.
Michael: Trust kind of feels like the squeeze of a hug.
It's knowing that there's someone else there with you, someone holding your hand while you cross the street. But it's also, you know, it's that knowing that someone has your back at times.
And that trust is a very delicate thing too. That you can gain trust. You can earn trust, but you can also lose trust if you're not careful with it. And I think it's a really, really important lesson to learn from an early age as, as you start to make friends and have different relationships, the power of trust and having trust in one another can make the world a better place.
Greg: Yeah, I think, you know, building trust is, you know, building a, not dependence, but knowing that you can rely on someone else.
And so, you know, one of the things that we talk about, right? It's a two way street. Trust. It is equal amounts from your own self and kind of giving yourself to be open to, to someone else to trust you and then for you to trust someone else. It's equally about you being open to that. And so I think, you know, doing really nice things for one another is clearly something, um, that builds trust.
When someone else is potentially going through something that might be very difficult for them. You know, being a helping hand, um, is always something, uh, that I think that I think a lot about that helps build trust between, you know, two different people or two different groups.
[PERSONAL CONNECTION TO TOPIC]
Matthew: Let’s take a quick break. And when we return, Greg and Michael will talk about how trust, home, and, most especially, love are at the center of everything they do at Lalo.
Michael: We started a company that's all about family and two core words. I think all three of these are core words that have to do about family, you know, love, home and trust; Three really fundamental words. But our name, Lalo, of the company actually is an acronym that stands for “Love All Little Ones”. So that idea of pulling that word “love” from our acronym.
Home being the center of where our products live and show up every day as we are there in family's lives, you know, through different milestones, but more importantly through those memories.
And trust, you know, we, we set out to make products and have our customers trust us and service and how we show up. So outside of just our own trust, which was, was definitely front and center and deciding that word and coauthoring a book together, but also the trust that our customers and our community have in our brand and our products. It means a lot to us too.
Matthew: We’ll be back in just a moment.
[BREAK]
Matthew: Welcome back.
Today on the podcast we’re talking about love, trust, and home with Lalo co-founders and A Kids Book About authors Greg Davidson and Michael Wieder.
I was curious what brought Greg and Michael into partnership with A Kids Co. It seems like Lalo and A Kids Co are a pretty cool match, and it turns out the story behind the connection supports exactly that!
Michael: Well we've known about a Kid's co for a long time and Jelani uh, and I got connected a long time ago, being a few years ago, not that long ago. But maybe, yes, maybe longer than some of the listeners have been alive.
But nonetheless actually, Jelani was a special guest on a podcast that Greg and I used to have called the Dad Pod. And, um, And we've, we've fallen in love with the mission of the company and being and telling really, really important stories. And you know, when we heard that board books were gonna be in the future of the collection of what you all did, we thought that that was a great marriage of what we do, who we are as people and dads, and the company that we have and the products we make to, to bring the two together.
So we were really, really excited to write these three books and bring them to your audience, bring them to our audience, and bring them out generally to the world. Cause we think they're important messages and important values to start building on from an early age.
Matthew: Our time’s almost up. I’m about to send you back out into the world. So let’s take a moment to consider what we see and hear and smell and taste and feel when we think about trust, home, and love.
Greg? Micheal? Are there any actions we, the listeners and their grownups, can take to help support creating a stronger sense of trust or love or home with the people in our lives?
Greg: Yeah, that is a great question. I'll take a quick stab at it.
I think, you know, from, from writing these books and thinking about, you know, that, of a parent reading it to, to a child versus us conceptualizing as much as what it meant to feel at home or, you know, be in love or have trust was when you write this type of book for children, you really put yourself inside a child, like the simplest version of being at home, feeling love and feeling trusted, which is like this really, like these like foundational concepts you almost take, I think, for granted at a certain point in time.
And so there's any kind of takeaways as to like ground yourself and what it means to be loved if your child is two and the way they're interpreting that. Um, I think it's something really special that's really like opened up my eyes through writing this book and also sharing it and with my kids.
Michael: Yeah, I'll just add, I think to, to not underestimate how much every action matters, whether to you or to someone else. And sometimes even the littlest things can make a big difference in someone else's life to make them feel loved, to make them feel a sense of home, and to grow your trust with that other person or with yourself.
And I think the other thing is that all of these three ideas or principles are also things that can be internalized or felt by yourself too. And start with you. So where's your home, and trusting and loving yourself are really, really important.
So don't forget about yourself too, cuz that's where it all begins.
[CLOSING]
Matthew: Thank you to Greg Davidson and Michael Wieder, co-authors of A Little Book About Trust, A Little Book About Home, and A Little Book About Love, for joining us today. And special thanks to Julia for lending their voice to this episode.
Julia: My name is Julia and I'm eight years old. I live in Ellicott City, Maryland. And my favorite thing is my family.
Matthew: A Kids Book About: The Podcast is written, edited, and produced by me, Matthew Winner. Our executive producer is Jelani Memory.
And this show was brought to you by A Kids Co.
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