Two young children watch a milkweed grow in their backyard—from seed to new buds to flowers, the lyrical text explores the lifecycle of the milkweed.

Wait like a seed,
Cozy and small.
Wait like a seed
‘Til the spring rains fall.

Wait Like a Seed beautifully explores the life cycles of milkweeds and its relationship to monarch butterflies. Complete with comprehensive backmatter perfect for school curriculums, this book combines the wonders of nature with thoughtful text and striking art.

Award-winning author Erin Alladin invites young gardeners to celebrate the world around them in this lyrical nonfiction text.

Illustrator Tara Anderson portrays these lifecycles with a nostalgic style, effectively capturing the wonder of the aspiring gardeners.

Erin Alladin is an editor, a writer, and an ecology enthusiast who is always looking for ways to combine her passions. Born in Northern Ontario to a gardener and a forester, she spent most of her early life looking at and thinking about the natural world. As a young adult she spent nearly a decade immersed in Toronto’s children’s literature scene before retreating back up north, where she continues to edit while growing vegetables and writing about regenerative agriculture. Erin’s debut picture book, Outside You Notice, received a starred review from Kirkus and was the Northern Lights Book Award winner. Erin lives near Parry Sound with her wife, her garden, and not quite enough bookshelves.

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A folk artist and award-winning illustrator who trained at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Tara Anderson is known for her lively and humorous animal illustrations. Her most recent work includes spot illustrations of a quirky little hamster in Sapphire the Great and the Meaning of Life, and beautiful coloured-pencil illustrations of a boisterous family of rhinos in Rhino Rumpus. Her debut That Stripy Cat was followed with Nat the Cat Can Sleep Like That, which won the 2014 Preschool Reads Award and was nominated for the 2015 SYRCA Shining Willow Award. The antics of Nat and his kitten friend are inspired by the cats who roam her farmhouse in Tweed, Ontario, where she lives with her husband and daughter.

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