{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Today We Will Be Eaten","description":"In this episode of Reading With Your Kids, Jed welcomes Academy Award\u2013winning director, animator, and author Alan Barillaro to celebrate his new picture book, Today We Will Be Eaten. Alan shares how a seemingly dark premise\u2014a ladybug and dragonfly convinced they\u2019ll be eaten\u2014becomes a gentle, meditative story about anxiety, uncertainty, and learning to take a breath. He describes the book as a \u201clittle reset,\u201d inviting kids and families to slow down, look up, and discover beauty even when life feels scary or unpredictable. Alan talks about the shift from collaborative animation at Pixar to the intensely personal world of writing and illustrating books, where there\u2019s \u201cless to hide behind.\u201d He explains his creative process: keeping notebooks of ideas for years, working on multiple projects at once like \u201ctomato plants\u201d in a garden, and borrowing lessons from animation\u2014testing work with trusted readers, listening to how it sounds out loud, and embracing failure as an essential part of finding the story. The conversation also touches on kids\u2019 anxiety, helicopter parenting, graphic novels as real reading, and Alan\u2019s nuanced view of AI and technology as tools that must be used ethically and thoughtfully. He teases upcoming projects, including Bun\u2019s Rabbit 2 and another picture book on the way. In the second half, Jed chats with Jennifer Dickinson, author of Maggie\u2019s Big Break, a middle grade novel about a girl with a stutter who faces bullying but finds belonging in theater. Jennifer shares her own history with stuttering, using story to help kids feel seen, heard, and brave enough to take risks\u2014and encourages families to co-read and talk honestly about fears, bullying, and courage. ","author_name":"Reading With Your Kids Podcast","author_url":"http:\/\/readingwithyourkids.libsyn.com\/site","html":"