Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children’s book creators! Today’s guest: Erin Alladin. Take it away, Erin!
In our hyper-online world, we worry about the effect our devices are having on us—and especially on our children. We strategize ways to disconnect from social media, from apps, from the dopamine machines we carry around in our pockets.
But what if we’re looking at it backward?
What if we’re trying to treat a symptom instead of the problem?
Human beings need connection: with each other, with nature, with the place we come from. We’re innate storytellers, and our stories weave webs of connection between our experiences and the world around us.
When I started writing my newest picture book, Wait Like a Seed, I didn’t realize that was what I was doing. I set out to recreate the “seed stretches” exercise I do with kids in school visits to transition from energetic action songs to quiet attentiveness. We curl our bodies like seeds, stretch out a foot like a root, reach up like shoots, and open our arms like leaves, moving physically through the cycle while I describe the natural triggers for each change. In the manuscript, the words flowed into second person:
Wait like a seed, / Cozy and small. / Wait like a seed / ‘Til the spring rains fall.
Suddenly, it wasn’t just about a handy cool-down exercise that doubles as a science lesson. I wanted kids to be drawn into the magic of the seed’s life cycle, and to sense the parallels with their own lives:
Hope like a bud, / Eager to start. / Hope like a bud / ‘Til your petals part.
When the manuscript was accepted and ready for illustrations, the publisher and I talked about what plant should be featured. We agreed on milkweed, which is the sole larval host plant for the endangered monarch butterfly. I love this choice, because kids can so easily build a relationship with milkweed…and therefore with monarchs. There are native varieties of the plant all over North America, and families can grow it in the ground or in pots, find it in pollinator gardens or waste spaces, and encourage their municipalities to protect it. If they find monarch caterpillars in a precarious situation, they can raise them at home and release them as adult butterflies. Suddenly, nature and humanity are no longer two solitudes at odds with each other. They are one whole made up of intersecting cycles.
That’s empowerment. That’s connection. That’s rootedness.
I grew up monitoring monarch caterpillars and sipping the nectar from clovers and learning the names of the trees and wildflowers around me. They gave me kinship, and a connection with other people who cared about them. I want the same for kids today, and for their grown-ups. If we connect enough with the natural world, it isn’t such a struggle to disconnect from the digital one.
How to use this book: Parents
- Read the poetry together. Act out each page: curl up like a seed, spread one leg out like a root, reach up like a sprout, open your arms as leaves…
- Look at the information at the back about milkweeds and monarchs. Brainstorm places milkweed might grow in your area. This summer, take walks to look for it and check for monarch caterpillars.
- Watch germination in real time by placing a large seed (beans and peas work well) between the edge of a clear cup and a paper towel that contains a scoop of moist soil.
- Plant a butterfly garden. In addition to milkweed, grow many flowering native plants so that something is always in bloom from early spring to late fall. Plant them close together in a sunny location with wind protection. Include a water source and a brush pile or shrubs where pupae can be sheltered. In an apartment or condo, grow your plants in large pots and marvel at how many insects find your balcony.
How to use this book: Teachers
Wait Like a Seed contains nine full-colour pages of informative back matter covering:
- The life cycle of a milkweed plant (eight illustrations)
- The life cycle of monarch butterflies (eight illustrations)
- Facts about monarchs and milkweed
- Information about the monarch’s remarkable migration cycle
- A glossary
- Selected readings
- More resources about monarchs and milkweed
This book connects to multiple curriculum topics, including:
- The needs of living things
- The life cycle of a butterfly
- The life cycle of a plant
Pair a reading of Wait Like a Seed with:
- A lesson on life cycles
- A seed-sowing activity
- A research project on butterflies and their habitat needs
- A lesson on the anatomy of a rhyme
- A shared writing activity in which you collectively write your own version for another natural cycle: Fall like the rain, Hatch like an egg, etc.
You can learn more about Erin and her books by visiting her website.